ESPANOLA, Ont. – The Espanola Paper Kings rallied from a two-goal second period deficit and came back to defeat the Blind River Beavers 4-2 Friday in a chippy Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League contest at the Regional Recreation Complex.
Scoreless late in the first period, Blind River connected twice to take a 2-0 lead into the intermission.
Their first marker came courtesy of Caleb Walker at 18:09 as he powered his way down the right wing, then drove hard around a defender and went in on Espanola netminder Logan Vale and stuffed in his seventh tally of the season.
The Beavers then got a buzzer-beater off the stick of Camden Cowan when he completed a give-and-go with Ellyott Dundas by steering in a cross-crease pass.
Answering that in the middle stanza, the Paper Kings came back to strike three times to put them up 3-2 after 40 minutes.
Graydon Guthrie got the home side going by converting on the power play at 3:29 after banking one in off of Blind River goalkeeper Justin Sullivan, while parked along the goal line.
Espanola then saw Callum Millar tally twice in the latter stages of the session to put them ahead by one.
The equalizer for Millar saw him hammer one in from between the circles off a scrambled draw in the Blind River zone.
His go ahead effort came less than a minute later after taking a pass across from Cain Savage into the left circle where he wired it past Sullivan.
Adding some insurance deep into the third, recently acquired Michael Morascyzk, notched his first as a member of the Paper Kings as a bouncing puck ended up at the top of the crease that he corralled, moved to his right and tucked in a backhand to round out the night’s scoring.
The result moves the Paper Kings record to 21-13-0-2 overall and in defeat, the Beavers fell to 10-21-0-4.
