THUNDER BAY – When the big guns get going, the Thunder Bay North Stars are tough to top.
Captain Edison Weeks and former linemates Easton Mikus and E.J. Paddington are 1-2-3 in the Superior International Junior Hockey League scoring race, and kept up their hot-handed ways on Friday night.
Weeks, who leads the league with 51 points, had a goal and two assists. Mikus, the odds-on favourite for rookie of the year, picked up a pair of goals to give him 23 on the season, and Paddington scored once and added a helper, leading the North Stars to a 7-3 win over a road-weary Wisconsin Lumberjacks squad at Fort William Gardens.
The final score wasn’t indicative of how the game narrative played out in the early stages of the contest, the Lumberjacks twice taking a one-goal lead, to the disappointment of the 497 in attendance.
But the long day of travel, exacerbated by a broken-down bus that didn’t get the team to the Gardens until after 6 p.m., began to take its toll.
Mikus tied the game with 3:24 to go in the first and Weeks made the most of a sensational cross-crease, backhand pass from linemate Keagan Jones and one-timed the go-ahead goal with just 35 seconds left in the period.
“Coach got on us right away and helped everybody reset their minds,” Weeks said of the North Stars response to the slow start.
“One thing I see Rob (DeGagne) doing a lot this year is making sure everybody’s ready on the mental side of things instead of just the physical side of things, which I think is equally as important. As soon as coach got us going there, I think the effort was really good.”
DeGagne, whose team has now won six straight, said Weeks and some of the other veterans have really stepped up his game this season.
The Alberta native has multiple points in five straight outings, feat he’s accomplished 13 times this season, a big part of why Weeks is atop the SIJHL scoring race.
“They know if you’re 20 or if you want to be one of the guys, you’ve got to be the guy. We did have a little bit of balanced scoring tonight, but Eddie worked his tail off. This is what he’s got to do, every game,” DeGagne said.
Weeks, for his part, says he’s not paying too much attention to the scoring parade – but certainly knows where he stands.
“I try not to look at it as much as I can just simply because I don’t want it to get into my head or anything. I like to be known as a team-first player all the time and a pass-first player. I’m not, by any means, trying to think I’m better than anybody else on this hockey team because I feel in order to have a ton of success, you need to have all cylinders firing all the time, not just one,” Weeks said.
Collin Baker and Nolan Fowler staked the Lumberjacks to a 2-1 lead in the first, sandwiching Maxwell Buffone’s second goal of the campaign, Fowler’s coming just 32 seconds after the North Stars tied things up at 14:57 of the first.
Jones scored the lone goal of the second to make it 4-2, but despite starting the third on the power play, it was the North Stars who gave up the special teams goal, Wisconsin’s Ryan Kayser connecting for the Lumberjacks second power-play goal of the night at the 7:08 mark of the third.
But it was all Stars from there.
Mikus, Paddington and Owen Doherty scored unanswered markers over a nine-minute span of the final frame.
Keenan Marks made 21 saves to earn the win for Thunder Bay, while William Forrester stopped 43 of the 50 North Stars shots and was tagged with the loss.
The Lumberjacks (10-15-3) and North Stars (21-9-3) meet again on Saturday night. Puck drop is 7:30 p.m. at the Gardens.
Kam River 8, Red Lake 4: Jeremy Dunmore and Nicholas Fagnilli had a pair of goals apiece to lead the second-place Fighting Walleye past the Miners and pick up a key two points on Friday night.
FIRST PERIOD
Scoring: 1. Wisconsin, Baker 9 (Davidson, Gulden) 5:10 pp. 2. Thunder Bay, Buffone 2 (Helmeczi, Anton) 14:57. 3. Wisconsin, Fowler 13 (Johnson) 15:29. 4. Thunder Bay, Mikus 22 (Larrett, Paddington) 16:26. 5. Thunder Bay, Weeks 19 (Jones) 19:25. Penalties: Kayser WIS, Jones TB (roughing) 1:06, Dial TB (roughing) 3:58, Burkholder WIS (tripping) 6:15, Tangedal TB (high sticking) 17:10.
SECOND PERIOD
Scoring: 6. Thunder Bay, Jones 6 (Weeks) 17:08. Penalties: Baker WIS (tripping) 9:41, Jones TB (boarding) 12:12, Kayser WIS (slashing) 20:00.
THIRD PERIOD
Scoring: 7. Wisconsin, Kayser 5 (Johnson, Phillips) 7:08 pp. 8. Thunder Bay, Mikus 23 (Weeks, Jones) 10:48 pp. 9. Thunder Bay, Paddington 18 (Anton) 17:14. 10. Thunder Bay, Doherty 3 (Glousher, Caddo) 19:32. Penalties: Anton TB (slashing) 6:37, Corcoran WIS (high sticking) 9:12, Trahiotis TB (slashing, roughing) 12:20.
GAME DATA – SOG – Wisconsin 9-11-4-24, Thunder Bay 21-14-15-50; Power plays (goals-chances) – Wisconsin (2-6), Thunder Bay (1-4); Goaltenders – Wisconsin: William Forrester, Thunder Bay: Keenan Marks; A: 497.
