North Stars squeak out divisional win to keep streak alive

“It seemed like every time you turned around, you were either on the PP or the PK, so that’s always tough,” North Stars head coach Nate Bedford said following his team’s eighth straight win overall. “I’m not a guy that likes to have special teams games, most traditionalists don’t, but obviously it’s good for the fans.

“It was a back and forth game and it was a good one to be a part of.”

The North Stars had a slow start, getting outshot 10-8 in the first period and found themselves trailing after a late marker from Matthieu Gomercic in a crease scramble.

But they came out flying in the second, outshooting the Broncos 25-8 and tying the game thanks to a great shorthanded forecheck from the duo of MacGregor Sinclair and Troy Gerein.

“They weren’t giving us much on their side of centre so we changed things up a little bit just to get better entries and get out of our zone a little bit quicker,” Bedford said. “I thought [Sinclair] really worked hard behind the net at making sure he turned the puck over and Gerein whiffed on one and then put in the second one.”

The third period was close, but an incredibly quick shot from the slot by Ben Allen made all the different.

Coby Downs added an empty netter for the North Stars.

Broncos goaltender Garrett Mason stood on his head, stopping 43 of 45 shots and keeping the North Stars’ powerplays unsuccessful.

“[Mason] was excellent and I think the better a goalie plays, the more it gets into your head sometimes and I think that was the case,” Bedford said. “We’re shooters. We’ve got some good goal scorers on our team but I think we probably didn’t have 10 shots on net total on our power play and that’s not good enough. We need to get pucks on net and jam a little bit better.”

Not to be forgotten, North Stars goalie Joel Gryzbowski was solid, stopping 29 of 30 shots to improve his season record to 8-1.

“The close game are the [most fun] games to play,” Gryzbowski said. “I love getting into one of those [goaltending] battles. That’s one of the things that drives me to make myself better.”

Gryzbowski’s 1.23 goals-against-average leads the league and his .951 save percentage is tied for the league lead.

The North Stars eight-game win streak is now the longest in the SJHL this season. Last season they only topped eight games in a row once, finishing the season with 11 straight wins.

Bedford said streaks aren’t on his mind.

“I really don’t pay attention to it too much,” Bedford said. “Obviously if we continue our streak and start to create some separation from some teams, I think that’s an important part. But as far as a streak goes, as long as we’re playing well – I’m okay with losing as long as we play as well as we can. That’s good enough for me.”

“I thought for the most part we came into a tough building and we played really hard,” Broncos head coach Darcy Haugen said. “Obviously we’d like to get the two points but I thought there were lots of positives.

“We made two mistakes and it cost us the hockey game.”

The North Stars will host the La Ronge Ice Wolves on Tuesday night at the Civic Centre, who they beat on Friday 4-3 in a shootout.

NorSask North Stars hockey gets underway at 7:15 with the Ultra Print pre-game show on CJNB/CJNS.

Nathan Kanter is battlefordsNOW’s sports reporter and voice of the Battlefords North Stars. He can be reached at Nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca or tweet him @NathanKanter11

by Nathan Kanter

North Stars squeak out divisional win to keep streak alive

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