Thunderbirds win extends unbeaten streak

The Soo Thunderbirds continued to roll on Sunday evening.

After beating the defending champion North Bay Skyhawks on Friday night by a score of 8-2, the Thunderbirds knocked off the Rayside Balfour Sabrecats by a 5-2 score in Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League action on Sunday at the John Rhodes Community Centre.

The Thunderbirds opened the scoring in the first period when Aaron Anderson beat Rayside goaltender Darren Rowlandson on the short side.

In the second period, the Thunderbirds used goals by Justin Towell and D.J. Jelitto to take a 3-0 lead over the Sabrecats, but the Sabrecats had some fight left in them for the third period.

After falling behind by three goals heading into the third, the Sabrecats used two power play goals to claw back into the game.

Brodie Wilson got the Sabrecats on the board at 2:59 of the third when he beat Soo netminder Frank Carlucci with his sixth goal of the season to cut the Soo lead to 3-1.

Minutes later, with the Sabrecats on a two man advantage, Matt Williams scored to cut the lead to one goal.

Moments after the Williams goal, Tom Vernelli of the Thunderbird skated in on a breakaway and beat Rowlandson to make the score 4-2 and Josh Leddy capped the scoring at 15:31 with his eighth goal of the season.

Thunderbirds assistant coach Rob Stopar, who was filling in for suspended head coach Jim Capy, wasn't totally pleased with his team's effort against the Sabrecats, especially after Friday's win over North Bay.

"I'm not really happy, no," Stopar said. "With a game like Friday's against North Bay, you're always disappointed. You're looking for consistency. You have to give credit to Rayside. They played well."

Stopar went on to say that despite the letdown from Friday night's game, they were happy with the overall result.

"Any time you play a big game like that, you're always concerned there's going to be a letdown," Stopar said. "We're happy that we got the win though."

Stopar added that the performance of Rayside shows that the team is improving, especially with a young hockey club saying, "This is a team that's definitely improving, especially since the last time we played them."

The win improves the Thunderbirds record to 10-0-2, while Rayside now falls to 2-7-1.

Next action for the Thunderbirds is on Friday evening when they are in Manitoulin to take on the Wild. The game is the first of a four game road trip that will also see games against Abitibi, Northern Michigan and North Bay.

Next home action will be on Friday, November 7th when the Abitibi Eskimos are in town.

In other NOJHL action on Sunday, the North Bay Skyhawks received two goals each from Clay Costoff and Matt West as they beat the Blind River Beavers 6-4 in Blind River.