Thunder Bay scored on its first three shots of the night and went on to down the Lumberjacks 7-4.
While they couldn’t keep up that kind of pace, with a start like that they were never in danger, earning their second straight Superior International Junior Hockey League triumph with a 7-4 home-ice win over the Wisconsin Lumberjacks at Fort William Gardens.
“I scored on my first shift of the game, just a great bounce right to me. It was a great start to the game. But we didn’t play our best, I would say. Wisconsin had more shots than us early and ended up with more shots throughout the whole game. For us that’s just terrible. It shouldn’t happen.” In the second, the Lumberjacks scored twice on the power play, needing a combined 13 seconds of man-advantage time to put the puck past Thunder Bay goaltender Ben Laurette.“I think we were OK on the power play tonight, but we were great. We had a lot of chances. We were better on the power play later in the game, but we were in the penalty box lots too.”
Collin Baker notched the Lumberjacks second goal at 12:23, only to have it wiped out by Connor Larrett’s sixth of the season, the goal coming just 29 seconds later. Wisconsin captain Dillon Phillips tallied his 20th of the season midway through the third to close the gap to three, but Laurette stood tall between the pipes the rest of the way to hold the Lumberjacks at bay.