The Soo Thunderbirds headed over the St Mary’s River on Saturday, December 4th to take on the Soo Eagles for their fifth meeting of the 2021 – 2022 Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League season. In four meetings between the Eagles versus the Thunderbirds, the Eagles have three wins and Thunderbirds have one overtime win before December 4th border clash.
With a loose puck in front of Eagle goaltender Ryan Gilmore, Samuel Lake slides an unassisted goal under Gilmore for his ninth goal of the season to give the visitors a 1 – 0 lead at 16:29 of the opening period. From the left faceoff circle, Alfred Rotiroti lifts a backhand over Gilmore’s blocker at 8:36 of the third to bring the Thunderbirds lead to 2 – 0. Kelsey Ouellet drew the lone helper on Ouelett’s 13th of the season. With 23 seconds remaining in the game and Eagle goaltender Ryan Gilmore on the bench for an extra attacker at the 19:37 mark of the period, Kelsey Ouellet finds an empty net for the Thunderbirds to give the visitors a 3 – 0 win over the Eagles. Michael Chaffay and Creo Solomon contributed on Ouelett’s sixth of the season. Eagle goaltender Ryan Gilmore turned away 20 of 23 shots while Thunderbird netminder Noah Metivier registered his tenth win of the season and second shutout of the 2021 – 2022 season with making 33 saves for the visitors.
In his second straight bench boss duties in Cole Jarrett’s absence, Jamie Henderson talked about the second straight shutout win and told Saultsports that “tonight was a real team effort. We had a real timely goal by Alfred there in the 3rd to give us a bit of breathing room but as we knew they came at us hard they’re a good team. but Noah was really good when he needed to be and we really battled the last five especially to preserve the shutout.”
“We had some glimpses this weekend of how we need to play to be successful credit the guys they had a good week of practice and it carried over to the games,” added Henderson.
The Thunderbirds are back in action on December 10th in Sault Ste Marie when they host the Blind River Beavers at the John Rhodes Centre for a 7:30 p.m puck drop.
