Voodoos secure No. 2 playoff seed with win over Storm
Responding with five unanswered goals, the Powassan Voodoos went on to down the Iroquois Falls Storm 5-1 in a Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League meeting Saturday at the Powassan Sportsplex.
With the outcome, Powassan secures the No. 2 seed in the upcoming NOJHL playoffs and will meet the No. 7 Soo Eagles in a best-of-seven quarter-final series beginning next week.
The Hearst Lumberjacks can tie them for points in the standings, with a win in their final game Sunday at Kirkland Lake, but the Voodoos hold the edge by virtue of the head-to-head tiebreaker.
After a late penalty picked up by Powassan deep in the Storm zone, Iroquois Falls countered quickly while the teams skated at four-on-four to convert as Rafek Dianov scooped up the draw won by Colin Jennings and whipped it past Cole Vreugdenhil, just prior to the horn sounding at 19:59.
Action in the second stanza saw the home side pull even at the 10-minute mark as Dylan Rousselle blasted in a shot through traffic from the top of the left circle, after being teed up from in deep by Jax Pereira, that eluded Storm starter Nathan Boudreau.
That gave the Powassan duo points in six straight outings apiece.
After peppering Boudreau with a multitude of shot attempts, the Voodoos went in front in the first minute of the third, thanks to Ryan Saginaw, who took a cross-ice feed from Pereira and ripped it in from the right side for his team-leading 35th tally.
Building on that, the Powassan notched two more to send them on their way to victory.
Caleb Dawson raced down the left side and buried a short-side sizzler to make it 3-1 before Bruce Grey added some insurance at 11:34 as he knuckled one in from outside the blueline that bounced off the end boards before hitting off Boudreau and going into the net.
They then saw Raphael Landry close it out as he steered in a buzzer beater in the waning moments to wrap-up the result.
The win sees the Voodoos wrap up the regular season at 36-13-1-2 while the Storm finish off their campaign at 15-32-2-3.
