NORTHERN ONTARIO JUNIOR HOCKEY LEAGUE
NOJHL MEDIA UPDATE
Release Date: Sunday, Dec. 7, 2014
Crunch extend winning streak while ending Elliot Lake’s
ELLIOT LAKE – Cody Gratton tallied twice and assisted on two others as the Crunch Crunch ran their Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League winning streak to four while ending the Elliot Lake Wildcats run of five straight by skating to a 6-4 victory Sunday evening at Centennial Arena.
The game was scoreless until the latter stages of the opening period when the visiting Crunch struck twice in a span of 52 seconds to go up a pair thanks to Daniel Stagg and Cody Gratton, who notched his league-leading 33rd of the season and also extended a consecutive game goal and point streak to five.
Elliot Lake got on the board early in the middle session as Spencer MacLean beat Cochrane starter Brett Young at 1:23.
The Crunch restored their two-tally cushion seven minutes later however as Josh Racek slipped one past A.J. Smith the Wildcats net.
Before the session was complete Gratton, coming off back-to-back hat tricks, buried his second of the evening at 16:03 giving him 11 in his past five outings and 33 overall.
Cochrane added another 3:58 into the third as Gratton picked up his second assist of the evening helping fee Henry Berger to put them up 5-1 before Dustin Cordeiro added one more at 8:10 to further the lead.
Battling back the Wildcats clawed their way back into the contest striking three times in less than a five-minute span to make it interesting.
After Liam Blais made it 6-2 at 9:01, Elliot Lake added two more on a man advantage effort by MacLean and an even strength marker from Adam Baxter with 6:14 to go.
However that’s a close as the home side would get before time ran out as the Crunch put the finishing touches on an unbeaten three-game road trip.
Young finished with 45 saves to pick-up the win for Cochrane while Smith made 32 stops in defeat.
NOJHL action resumes Monday evening as Powassan hosts Mattawa in a 7 p.m. start at the Sportsplex.
