ESPANOLA, Ont. – Kobe Braham collected a pair of first period goals, including the eventual game-winner, as part of a 3-1 win by the Espanola Paper Kings versus the Elliot Lake Red Wings Friday evening in a Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League encounter at the Regional Recreation Complex.
The home side provided the night’s initial marker midway through the opening frame as Braham drove hard down the right wing and sent a play in front that clipped off the skate of an Elliot Lake defenceman and bounced into the opener side, leaving Red Wings’ starter Sean Guerin no chance on it.
Skating four-on-four late in the session, Braham bagged another as he worked his way free off the draw and whipped in a loose puck at 18:45.
Heading to the second stanza, Elliot Lake got on the board half-way through the match-up, while up a skater, as Cameron Dial buried one upstairs, from a sharp angle, from the right of Espanola netminder Creedon Dyck.
Remaining 2-1 Paper Kings into the third, the hosts went to work on a man advantage and added to their lead when Benjamin Lacroix did most of the work before sending a feed over to a waiting Atley Gringorten on the right side who hammered home his team-leading 10th tally by blasting in a one-timer at 7:26.
That would be it in terms of tallies the rest of the way with Dyck getting the win for Espanola while Elliot Lake’s Guerin suffered the narrow defeat.
