Crunch erase lead to beat Thunderbirds

A three-game homestand came to a tough end for the Soo Thunderbirds on Thursday night.

The Thunderbirds gave up three third-period goals as they dropped a 5-2 decision to the Cochrane Crunch at the John Rhodes Community Centre in Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League action.

With the game tied at two, the Crunch received goals from Aviv Miller, Daniel Stagg and Henry Berger in the final period to pick up the win. The win came after the Thunderbirds had opened up a 2-0 lead in the opening period.

“For the second game in a row, we jumped out to a 2-0 lead and had trouble carrying that throughout the game,” said Thunderbirds coach Jordan Smith. “It was a tough night. We ran into penalty trouble in the second period but our penalty kill was great.”

“At the end of the day Cochrane played a better game than we did,” Smith added.

Miller had a pair of goals for the Crunch in the win while Jason Berube also scored. Goaltender Brett Young stopped 23 shots.

“We have to be proud of our kids,” said Cochrane Coach Ryan Leonard. “We had some bus issues and the boys had some bonding time on Highway 144.”

After bus issues led to the Crunch leaving for Sault Ste. Marie early Thursday morning, Cochrane then found themselves stranded on the highway after more bus issues and didn’t arrive at the arena until shortly before 7 p.m., which pushed back the start time of the game by 30 minutes.

“The guys battled tonight, from the goalie to the defencemen to the forwards,” Leonard said. “We played good defensive hockey and we didn’t give them a lot of scoring chances and we just stuck with it. We can play good defensive hockey when we need to. We had our two top guys out of the lineup and can’t play that run-and-gun style that we like but we can adapt.”

Anthony Miller and Brett Jeffries scored for the Thunderbirds in the loss. Mario Culina made 28 saves.

With the loss, the Thunderbirds record falls to 28-5-1-5 while Cochrane improves to 24-14-0-2.

The Thunderbirds return to action on Feb. 6 when they open a stretch of four-straight on the road in Kirkland Lake against the Gold Miners. Next home action for the Thunderbirds is on Feb. 16 when they host the Sudbury Nickel Barons.