It wasn’t the prettiest of performances, but the Battlefords North Stars extended their win streak to five straight games Friday night.
Coby Downs had a goal and an assist, while Joel Grzybowski stopped all 19 shots he faced for his third shutout of the season, as the North Stars picked up a 2-0 win over the Yorkton Terriers at the Civic Centre.
“I think it’s good for us to have more of these hard-earned wins,” Downs said.
“There’s going to be times when you may not have the best of performances, but you’re able to find a way to get it done, and that’s what we did tonight.”
Although the North Stars outshot the Terriers by a 47-19 margin, the game was much closer than the shots indicated, as it wasn’t decided until an empty net goal from Layne Young with five seconds remaining.
“If our goalie wasn’t as good as he was tonight, especially on their odd-man rushes, we would have been in trouble,” North Stars head coach and general manager Nate Bedford said.
“Our goal coming into the game was to allow two goals or less and play well defensively. We didn’t do a good enough job with that part of our game, and I think we took things for granted a little bit, so that was a bit frustrating early on.”
Downs, who also had an assist on Young’s goal, broke a scoreless tie just past the halfway point of the second period as he found the back of the net for this year’s Teddy Bear Toss goal.
“Everyone on the team wants to score that goal, and it was nice to get it out of the way,” Downs said. “We had several chances earlier on in the game, and the pressure was starting to build a little bit.
“Things had shifted up at the point and I was yelling at Connor (Logan) to get the puck back up there, but he passed it over to me. I kind of faked going to the right when I was behind the net, and then I went to the left. When I looked up, their goalie wasn’t even there, and I was able to push it in.”
Matt Vernon, the son of former NHL netminder Mike, was sublime in between the pipes for the Terriers as he made 45 saves to earn the game’s second star honours.
“I thought our goaltending was really solid,” Terriers head coach Casey O’Brien said. “The first goal that they scored came on a defensive breakdown and Matt overplayed it a little bit, but I thought he was great all night long.
“We had five or six really good scoring chances, including a couple of two-on-ones in the first period, and if we had scored on those opportunities it could have been a totally different game early on. With that said, to play like we did on the road against the top team in the league and to do it without some of our key guys like (Regan) Seiferling, (Parker) Robinson and (Quin) Hobbs, I’m very happy with our performance.”
The Terriers, who have lost two straight games, have a 13-15-3-0 record for the season and are in a three-way tie for eighth place in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League standings with the Melfort Mustangs and the Kindersley Klippers.
As for the North Stars, they now have a 26-6-0-0 record and have a five-point lead over the Estevan Bruins in the race for first place in the league.
The Bruins suffered an 8-3 loss on the road to the Flin Flon Bombers Friday.
The North Stars will be back in action Saturday night when they’ll welcome the Klippers to the Civic Centre for a 7:30 p.m. battle.
