North Stars hammer Blazers

The Sault Ste. Marie North Stars started off slowly but ended strong as they scored four times in the third period in an 8-2 victory over the Kanata Blazers in their third game at the Central Region Midget AAA Championships taking place in North Bay this week.

Dan Vernelli and Brett Perlini led the way offensively scoring two goals each. Trevor McNutt, Derrek Coccimiglio, Brad DiCandia, and Tyler Luikkonen added singles in the blowout.

But the game wasn’t an easy victory for the Stars. Brett Perlini opened the scoring 1:19 into the first period and he added his second before the midway point of the opening period.

However, the Kanata team which was 0-2-1 in the tournament and had been outscored 17-4 in their first three games broke the Stars shutout streak of 137 minutes as Kanata defenceman Ryan Caron took a soft shot from the point that went through traffic in front then beat a screened Thomas Gravelines to make it 2-1 Stars.

The Stars rebounded in the second period thanks to a couple of Dan Vernelli goals to give the GNML champs a 4-1 lead after two periods of play.

The Stars offence really got rolling in the third for what was their best period of the tournament so far.

The offensive onslaught in the third started thanks to a nice shorthanded goal by Tyler Liukkonen who fired home a goal on a nice feed from Dean Howard to make it 5-1 less than five minutes into the period.

Less than three minutes later Brad DiCandia put home a rebound off about three original shots by Trevor McNutt to increase their lead to 6-1.

Kanata would get their second goal of the game on the powerplay about a minute later as Greg Magalhaes was credited with the Blazer goal making it 6-2 Stars.

Coccimiglio and McNutt would add two more to make it 8-2 as the Stars improved their record to 3-0 in the provincial event.

North Stars head coach Michael Hall was pleased with the result but he wasn’t thrilled with his club’s start.

“I thought we came out a little sluggish in the first period,” said Hall.

“Whether we played down to our competition or not you got to give Kanata credit they came out and played hard. I thought for the better part it was only a 2-1 game and they had a really good first and we got a couple of breaks in the second and I thought in the third we played extremely well.”

Vernelli, who scored the two key goals in the second to break this game open believes the Stars are starting to play like they can.

“We worked hard and we pushed our feet and drove the net,” said Vernelli.

The North Stars have a busy Thursday ahead of them as they play two games starting at 10 a.m. as they face the winless Cumblerland Barons and then play later that day against the unbeaten Markham Waxers at 7 p.m.

Photo by Julie Walker