Jr. Trappers goaltender Michael Codina-Lucia gets ready for a shot on goal by the Temiscaming Royals. Photo by Chris Dawson. It's his favourite rink to play in - and Sacha Guimond showed again why on Friday night.
Jr. Trappers goaltender Michael Codina-Lucia gets ready for a shot on goal by the Temiscaming Royals. Photo by Chris Dawson.
It's his favourite rink to play in - and Sacha Guimond showed again why on Friday night.
Guimond redirected a Kyle Rowe point shot from the slot at 1:27 of overtime to give the North Bay Trappers a 5-4 win over the Temiscaming Royals at Le Centre and snap a four-game winless skid.
"I was pretty tired and I don't know why I went in front of the net and I had a pass right on my tape so I just tipped it in," the Ville-Marie native said of his game-winner.
"It's always very fun to score in overtime, especially in Temiscaming, it's always fun to play here, so I'm pretty happy about that."
Jon Aubertin also scored twice for North Bay to give him a team-leading 16 on the season while Andre Leclair and Robin Mendelsohn each had a pair of goals and an assist for the Royals (9-7-3).
It was a highly entertaining, see-saw affair that saw the Trappers (8-9-2) surrender an early three-goal lead, then get solid goaltending from newcomer Mike Codina-Lucia in the third to send the game to extra time.
For Guimond, his teammates and his coach, the win spells relief plain and simple.
"The monkey's off everybody's back," said head coach Ian Swalucynski.
"We needed the win, we needed to gain confidence, and we've gotta be ready Sunday," he said, adding he's proud of the total team effort.
"We did what we had to to do, we could have folded the tent when they went up and we didn't, we battled back."
The Trappers got off to a flying start, taking a 3-0 lead in the first 10 minutes.
After JP Kascsak took a tripping minor off the opening faceoff, Travis Fernley took an errant Royals pass up the right side and fed Darnell Koosees who beat a sliding Matt Zawadski for a shorthanded goal at the 47 second mark.
Aubertin then beat Zawadski with a high wrister at 7:10 and converted a crisp cross-crease pass from Brennan Wright at 9:57 to chase the Royals netminder after just nine shots in favour of Mikell Bilodeau.
But the Royals then answered with four straight, the first from Leclair who netted a one-handed beauty past Codina-Lucia at 18:58.
Temiscaming kept the momentum going in the second, scoring three more to take a 4-3 lead.
First, Mendelsohn flipped a backhander past Codina-Lucia's stacked pads just 29 seconds in. He then redirected a floating Josh Blacksmith wrister at 3:44 on the power play to tie it.
Leclair put the Royals in front at 12:48 with a weird one, the puck somehow bouncing off Codina-Lucia's back and skate into the goal.
Scott Pawson finally stopped the bleeding for North Bay less than three minutes later, lunging across a sprawled Bilodeau and shovelling home a loose puck that first hit the left post to even the game at 4.
Both teams had several good chances to take the lead in the third, but Codina-Lucia was especially stellar, making 17 solid stops. The best of those came near the seven-minute mark when he fell backward and put his glove behind his back to swipe up a trickling puck off the goal line.
"He seemed to be finding his feet a little bit," Swalucynski said of his netminder, who was lifted in the second period just a night earlier in his Trappers debut.
"He bailed us out when he needed to."
Royals head coach Steve McCharles, meanwhile, says his team has nothing to hang their heads about.
"Happy with the comeback, happy with the character, " McCharles said.
"Without question, not even close, we were by far the better team in the third period, we just couldn't bury one."
After Thursday's home-ice shootout loss to the Royals, the Trappers are three points back of their second-place rivals in the NOJHL East.
They remain on pace to reach their stated weekend goal of getting five of six points as they host division-leading Sudbury on Sunday night at 7 pm at Memorial Gardens.
GAME NOTES: The Royals outshot North Bay 45-39...the Trappers lost Jamie Olivier with a left forearm injury after he was hit from behind by the Royals' Brandon Windsor midway through the first. Windsor received a minor penalty and a game misconduct...the Royals were 1-for-4 on the power play, the Trappers 0-for-2...Referee Derek Gratton issued nine penalties, five to North Bay...Announced attendance was 343...the three stars were Guimond, Leclair and Mendelsohn.
