NOJHL a game at a time

Five for seven. As in, of the seven games that the Northern Ontario Jr. Hockey League had scheduled for last week as it returned to play from COVID-19 hiatus, five of them went into the books.

Thus, the NOJHL is maintaining a good average of completion of scheduled matches. In all, when totaling the 51 slated games to date — November and December of 2020 and February of 2021 — 46 have gone on as scheduled.

In fact, the only five games that have not been played thus far this COVID-19 affected season were as a result of precautionary measures taken by the league. Notably, not a single NOJHL team member has tested positive for COVID-19 to date.

The two games that were postponed last week both involved the Espanola Express and French River Rapids. The postponements were initiated by the NOJHL once it was informed that a member from one of the teams had been in contact with a person who had a positive initial result on a COVID-19 test.

The NOJHL was informed that the risk was very low. Still, league commissioner Rob Mazzuca made the decision to call off the two games relative to the NOJHL’s policies and procedures manual.

I will say that after hearing of the league’s decision to postpone the two games, I thought it was over reaction on the part of the NOJHL, especially considering that Mazzuca himself noted that “the risk was very low and that no member of either team (Espanola or French River) has had a positive result in testing or is showing any symptoms.”

However in talking to Mazzuca again today, he made a point of stressing that he and the league will “continue to maintain an overabundance of caution. We will continue to go day to day, game to game.”

As far as the five games that were played in a six day span, I took in four of them — one in person at the rink and three more via Hockey TV. And there are highlights galore worth noting.

• It was French River that played host to Espanola in the NOJHL’s first game of 2021 and there was no lack of on ice drama as the Rapids pulled out an improbable 6-5 shootout victory over the Express.

Trailing 5-2 with just over two minutes to play in the third period, French River scored three goals in the span of 40 seconds — at 17:48, 18:11 and 18:28 — to tie the game at 5-5 before Cooper Bowman finalized the frantic finish for the Rapids with the shootout winner.

The furious French River comeback overshadowed two-goal performances by two Espanola forwards, rookie Luke Bibby and veteran Cole Delarosbil.

• Espanola rebounded in fine fashion the next night with a 4-2 home ice victory over French River.

And the Express got two more goals from the aforementioned Luke Bibby in the win.

Bibby, who has a late October, 2004 birth date and was a 13th round pick of the Owen Sound Attack at the 2020 Ontario Hockey League priority selections draft, now has a team-leading nine goals in 12 games for Espanola this season.

• 20-year old forward Noah Boman returned to the Soo Thunderbirds lineup for the first time since the 2018-2019 season and scored two goals to spark his hometown team to a 5-2 win over the visiting Blind River Beavers. Boman spent the 2019-2020 season in the Ontario Jr. Hockey League.

• On to the next match-up, Blind River coach Kyle Brick credited his team for a hard fought effort in gaining a point from a 6-5 shootout loss to the Soo.

The visiting Beavers forced the shootout with a power play goal by Matt Cato with less than three minutes to play in the third period.

It was a see-saw match in which the Thunderbirds scored first only to have the Beavers eventually take a 4-2 lead before the Soo rebounded to go ahead 5-4 in the third period and then have Blind River eventually tie it.

And it was powerful skater Cooper Smyl — who also had a goal in regulation — coming through with the only shootout marker to give the Thunderbirds the win.

Rookie goalie Gavin Disano was a standout for Blind River with 37 saves, several of them being of the difficult variety.

• Smyl then fired three goals to spark the Thunderbirds to a 7-2 triumph over the Beavers. Smyl, a 2002 birth year speedster who is on the radar of more than one Division 1, National Collegiate Athletic Association school, now has nine goals in 11 games for the Thunderbirds.

Meanwhile, the Soo and Blind River have three more games slated against each other for this week.

And the Cochrane Crunch and Timmins Rock have confirmed a 10-game cohort schedule of matches for a 20-day period between March 10 and 30.