Surging Sudbury holds off Powassan in highly-skilled affair
On a night that featured multiple impressive goals by both sides, it was the Greater Sudbury Cubs who eventually held off the Powassan Voodoos 4-3 in a well-executed Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League on-ice affair at Gerry McCrory Countryside Sports Complex.
Late on a brief man advantage midway through the first period, the Cubs opened the scoring when Daks Klinkhammer darted up the ice with pace into the Voodoos zone where he fired a shot that was blocked, but Noah Kohan swooped in to collect the loose puck and ripped it past netminder Derrick Champagne.
Building on that, Greater Sudbury banged in two more markers to take a 3-0 cushion into the intermission.
On their second goal, Caden Dubreuil snagged a rebound off the pad of Champagne, after an Alex Valade attempt, and stuffed it in the open corner for his 13th of the season.
With the assist, Valade is now on a nine-game point streak.
The Cubs then notched another at 17:49 thanks to the defenceman Jacob Signoretti joining the rush and steering in a feed from the top of the crease put his way off a speedy dash down the right side by and in deep by Nolan Newton.
The helper sees Newton extend a heater to 12 consecutive contests in which he has etched his name on the game sheet.
Cutting into the deficit early in the middle stanza, Powassan’s Parker Bonsignore fired a cross-ice pass over to Jesse Lefebvre, who snapped a shot from the top of the right circle that hit off the stick of a defender a knuckled high over the glove of Greater Sudbury starter Matthew Vahramian and into the net.
Getting that back while up a skater at 15:12, the home side’s Mason Walker sent a long play ahead that hit the tape of Newton and saw the crafty forward go in and calmly make a couple of dekes prior to tucking in his NOJHL-leading 35th tally of 2025-26.
Roaring back, the Voodoos connected twice less than a minute apart late in the session to make it 4-3 after two periods.
Jax Pereira at 17:22 saw another impressive goal provided in the match-up as he took a dish from Caleb Dawson and pumped it into the top right hand corner.
Then 50 seconds later, Marcus Krats pressured a play ahead that allowed Heath Bradley to muscle his way in and send a sharp wrister that flew by Vahramian.
In the final frame, it remained 4-3 for the hosts into the late going, where the visitors got their netminder out for an extra attacker to try and level the proceedings and send it to overtime, but in the end were denied on their comeback bid.
Improving to 17-0-1-2 in their past 20 games with the triumph, the Cubs moved to 31-6-2-2 overall.
Vahramian won his eighth straight start as well, improving to 11-0-0-1 in his past dozen appearances.
In the narrow defeat, the Voodoos fell to 25-11-1-2.
