North Stars open tourney with shutout win

The North Stars didn't play their best but it was still good enough for the Great North Midget League champions to leave North Bay Memorial Gardens with a 3-0 victory over the North Bay Trappers in their opening game of the Central Region Midget AAA Championships taking place this week in North Bay.

Thomas Gravelines, who made numerous great saves to keep the Trappers off the scoresheet recorded the shutout for the North Stars.

The Soo opened the scoring on a powerplay goal which appeared to be scored by Dean Howard but was credited to Adam Pyymaki as he went upstairs on Trappers goalie Marc Veilleux to make it 1-0 North Stars.

With less than four minutes to play in the first period the Stars cashed in again on a powerplay as a shot from the point by Kevin Smith seemed to surprise Veilleux and all of a sudden it was 2-0 Stars.

Derrek Coccimiglio appeared to beat Veilleux on a wraparound attempt in the second period, however, the whistle was blown and the Trapper netminder was able to hide the puck from the goal judge.

Then it the Thomas Gravelines show in the middle frame as he made 13 stops in the second period, many of the spectacular variety.

“Thomas was outstanding,” said North Stars head coach Michael Hall.

“I told the guys after the game if it wasn’t for Thomas this could have been a 3-3 game or a 4-3 game.”

The North Stars iced the victory after a sloppy giveaway by Trappers defenceman Kyle Radigan at the Soo blueline midway through the third. Jerry Petingalo picked up the puck drove to the net and Trevor McNutt roofed the rebound on Veilleux to close out the scoring.

It was another frustrating goal that put the game out of reach for the Trappers.

“I can see the whole ice and all they did was fall asleep and they started watching the play and there’s no excuse for that,” said Keenan about the defensive breakdown which was similar to the shorthanded goal they allowed to make it 5-3 Markham late in the third period of their opening game.

While the North Stars got the win they needed, their head coach wasn’t overly impressed by his team’s effort to open the tourney.

“There’s no question that’s not the performance that we needed but everybody has got to understand it’s a long week,” said Hall.

“Sometimes you will win a game ugly and sometimes you will win a nice game other times you can get outworked. I thought tonight we got outworked that was the biggest problem they were beating us to loose pucks and we capitalized twice on the powerplay quick and then we scored one there at that end.”

The North Stars return to action Tuesday at 1 p.m. as they face the London Jr. Knights.