Thunderbirds feast on Wild (with photo gallery)

The Soo Thunderbirds continued to tune up for the playoffs with a 10-0 trouncing of the Manitoulin Wild on Friday evening.

Although the Thunderbirds are not playing their best hockey of the season, the team took advantage of a Manitoulin team, who will likely be the Soo's first round opponent in the playoffs, with little fire power in their line up.

The Thunderbirds built leads of 1-0 after one period, 4-0 after two and seemed to score at will in the third to record the victory in Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League action at the John Rhodes Community Centre.

Manitoulin entered the game without their four top scorers in the line up in Brent Assinewai, Aaron Assinewai, Eldon Cheechoo and Ken May. The four have combined for 98 goals and 230 points.

"We played like a team that knew that they had nothing on the line tonight but we went out there and had some fun," said Thunderbirds head coach Jim Capy. "We changed some lines around for a couple of periods to look at some different combinations but overall it is tough to get up for a game that doesn't mean anything right now.

"(Manitoulin) are a little banged up right now and missing their top guns but I don't see them being an easy ride in the playoffs. They have played us tough all year."

Defenseman Kyle Jones scored his first of two goals on the evening on the power play for the lone goal of the first period.

In the second period, Aaron Anderson scored his 35th of the season 2:26 in after digging the puck out from a scrum along the boards, walking out in front the net and beating Wild goaltender Jay Punsky.

Kelly Thomson followed with his 23rd of the year when he broke in alone faked to the forehand and beat Punsky on the backhand. Ryan MacKay scored his 12th short handed late in the period on a shot through a screen.

In the third, the Thunderbirds took advantage of the double minor penalty and scored twice as Thomson jammed in his second of the game at 3:41 before Jones added his fourth of the season 19 seconds later.

Anderson gobbled up a rebound in front of the net and scored his second of the game at 12:05 before Butkus scored his 21st of the season 10 seconds later. Josh Leddy scored his 18th and Mike MacMillan notched goal number 30 to cap the scoring late in game.

Leddy recorded three assists while Anderson, Jason Weigal and MacMillan added two each.

The Thunderbirds fired 40 shots on goal while Casey Mapes turned aside all 19 Manitoulin shots to record his first shutout of the season.

"We had set up some goals down the stretch and getting 30 wins was one of them and we did that tonight," said Capy. "We also wanted to wrap up second overall and we did that a couple games ago because if North Bay gets knocked off that becomes important."

Matt Dias of the Thunderbirds was helped off the ice 14 seconds into the third period with a leg injury. Earlier, Andrew Jakubaitis went off with a foot injury and Nick Tombari left with chipped teeth and a cut lip.

"It is important that we stay healthy and tonight we had some tough breaks in that department. This was the first time in a while we dressed 20 players but we didn't finish with 20 and that's the way it has been all year,'" said Capy.

The Thunderbirds conclude the regular season on Sunday night in North Bay against the league leading Skyhawks.

While the Thunderbirds do not know who they will face in the best-of-seven Western Division semi-final but they do know that game one will be played next Friday night at 7:30 p.m. at the Rhodes.

Manitoulin sits two points behind Blind River for third place with one game remaining against second place Northern Michigan on Saturday.

Photos courtesy of Jim Egan