North Stars win fourth straight

The Sault Ste. Marie North Stars officially clinched a playoff spot in the Central Region Midget AAA Championships with a 4-1 victory Thursday morning over the Cumberland Barons.

Once again the Stars were solid defensively in this win, allowing a late powerplay goal with 1:16 left by Rene Lamoureux in the third to ruin the shutout bid for Ryan Dube and make the final 4-1.

Stars head coach Michael Hall was impressed with his club’s play in their own end.

“The kids have been playing extremely well defensively,” Hall said after the game.

“The three goals that we’ve given up in the tournament have all come from the point and they’ve been hitting off people or whatever and they end up in our net so we are obviously very happy with the way we are playing defensively.”

Derrek Coccimiglio and Mike Rivard got things going for the Stars in the first period giving the GNML champs a 2-0 lead after the first period.

Rivard cashed in on the powerplay putting a rebound past Barons goalie Rock Lamoureux at 17:10 of the first.

The score stayed that way until the third period when Dan Vernelli banged home a rebound for his third goal in the last two games to give the Stars a commanding 3-0 lead.

The Stars added another insurance marker when Barons goalie Rock Lamoureux raced to a loose puck near the blueline but Adam Pyymaki beat him to the puck and avoided the late poke check and walked in casually and put it into the empty net to make it 4-0.

The road gets tougher from here as their last two games of the round robin event taking place in North Bay are against the unbeaten Markham Waxers on Thursday night at 7 p.m. and finish off against the GTHL champion Toronto Jr. Canadiens who have a record of 3-1 on Friday at 1 p.m.