The Battlefords North Stars wrapped a six-game home stand on a winning note Saturday at the Civic Centre.
With a 7-4 triumph in their second game of the weekend, the defending Canalta Cup champions not only won both of their meetings with the Yorkton Terriers, but they also picked up their eighth straight win in the process.
“Whenever you can get four points from two games, it’s a pretty good weekend overall,” North Stars general manager and head coach Brandon Heck said.
“I thought a lot of players stood out over the weekend, but especially the line of Elijah Loon-Stewardson, Matthias Urbanski and Ryan Gil as they were playing with a lot of confidence. The stat sheet might not show it, but I thought they were our most effective group of players in both games and I’m excited about that line going forward.”
A night after having a 72-19 shot advantage, the North Stars once again outshot the Terriers by a 53-24 margin in a much tighter affair.
“I don’t think we generated enough traffic in front of the net, especially on Friday night,” Heck said. “I’ll tip my hat to their goalie [Saskatoon Blades prospect Nolan Maier] as he’s an amazing young player.
“I’d like to see our defensive play improve though from this weekend. We let them get behind us a couple of times and we had a couple of bad changes that also led to goals.”
The North Stars, who now have a 10-0-1-0 record, were led on offence by MacGregor Sinclair as he scored a pair of goals and set up three others.
“Our power play was really clicking tonight,” said Sinclair, who had a goal and an assist on the man advantage. “We knew that we had to be a lot better than we were a week ago and we did that with a couple of goals.
“As a whole, we had our moments where we were dominant but we have to get some smarter shots on net. Other than that, I think these games were both pretty solid for us.”
Defenceman Levi Kleiboer had a goal and three assists in the win, while captain Layne Young scored once and set up two others to put himself at 27 points in 11 games played and is now three markers back of Estevan’s Zach Goberis for the league scoring lead.
Gil and Dakota Hubener had a goal and an assist each, with Urbanski rounding out the scoring with a shorthanded marker in the third period.
Kolby Matthews, who is starting in the place of the injured Taryn Kotchorek, improved to 6-0 with a 20-save performance.
At the end of the game, backup netminder Cam Taylor was thrown in between the pipes for the final 90 seconds as a reward for his work with the North Stars since being called up from the Battleford Midget AA Barons since Kotchorek’s injury.
“Cam’s a great soldier and he’s always wanting to come out and help out in any way that he can,” Heck said.
“I wanted to put him into the game a little bit earlier, but we had a long penalty kill there late in the third period that messed that plan up a little bit. It was a good experience for him, though he told me that he will probably have to change his underwear after being thrown into the game like that.”
The Terriers, who have a 3-12-1-0 record and are in fourth place in the Viterra Division, were led on offence by Chantz Petruic as he scored a goal and set up three others.
“He’s really starting to find his groove for us now after playing only a handful of shifts last season in the WHL for Moose Jaw,” Terriers head coach and general manager Casey O’Brien said.
“We certainly had a deer in the headlights look in the first period Friday night as Battlefords showed why they are the top team in the league right now, but I thought we were competitive the rest of the weekend. We are pretty banged up at the moment, but our guys dug and showed that we can play with anyone in the league.”
Aiden Bulych, a 15-year-old draft pick of the Prince Albert Raiders, potted a pair of goals in his second game for his hometown team after being called up from the Yorkton Maulers of the Saskatchewan Midget AAA Hockey League earlier in the week.
Dexter Robinson had the other goal for the Terriers, who received a 46-save performance from Ben Laidlaw in his debut for the team after being acquired from the Alberta Junior Hockey League’s Calgary Canucks a day earlier.
The North Stars, who are tied with the Humboldt Broncos for first place in the Olympic Buildings Division but have six games in hand, will start a three-game divisional road trip Tuesday evening against the Kindersley Klippers.
They will then travel to face the Broncos Wednesday before a rematch with the Klippers Saturday.
“It’s still pretty early in the season so we haven’t really gotten a full read on one another yet,” Sinclair said. “We played Kindersley on the opening weekend in September and we faced Humboldt once here at the start of October.
“We’ll have to come out strong like we did against Yorkton this weekend and we’ll see how things go from there.”
The next home game for the North Stars will be on Saturday, Nov. 11 when the Weyburn Red Wings will travel to the Civic Centre.
