Major home match
Having started the 2018-2019 Great North Midget Hockey League regular season with three road games, the Timmins Majors will play their home opener on Friday night.
Game time is 7:30 p.m. at McIntyre Arena as the Majors will play host to the New Liskeard Cubs. Both teams take a record of 1-2-0 into the Friday night match.
Timmins began the regular season by splitting a pair of road games with the Soo Major Midget Thunderbirds two weekends ago before dropping a 4-2 away match to the Kapuskasing Flyers on Tuesday afternoon of this week.
The school day matinee match in Kapuskasing drew a reported crowd of close to 900 fans at the Sports Palace.
“It was a packed house … a great atmosphere,” Timmins head coach Brandon Perry told Hockey News North. “We were a little overwhelmed at first but we settled down and gave Kap a good game.”
Special teams were a difference in Tuesday’s tilt as Kapuskasing scored three power play goals, including the clincher in the final minute of the third period that made the score 4-2.
“We need to have a better penalty kill than that,” Perry noted.
Still, the second year Timmins bench boss was happy with the compete level of his Majors.
“We worked hard … we were down 1-0 and 2-1 and we came back to tie the game both times,” Perry relayed. “We missed a number of glorious scoring opportunities. It was a great game … both teams played a very good game.”
Kapuskasing has a perfect record of 5-0-0 to date and Perry called the Flyers “a very structured, well coached team.”
Looking ahead to Friday’s home game against New Liskeard, Perry pointed out that the Cubs have “some good players. There are no easy games for us in this league and our boys better show up to play if we are going to win.”
New Liskeard has two defensemen who were late cuts by Timmins at its main tryout camp preparatory to the start of the season. They are Josh Kingsbury and Clifford Edwards.
“They are both good players but with so many returning defensemen and a few who we added we would not have been able to give Kingsbury and Edwards enough ice time,” Perry pointed out.
Timmins will have veteran defenseman Jeremy Jeffries in the lineup for the first time this season on Friday. The dependable defender had been serving a suspension that he picked up at a sanctioned Aboriginal tournament during the summer.
The Majors will have little opportunity to rest after Friday’s home opener against New Liskeard as they will board the bus for road games on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon versus the North Bay Minor Midget Trappers and Sudbury Minor Midget Wolves.