TIMMINS, Ont. – The Cochrane Crunch broke a third period tie with a pair of early markers in the final frame before eventually going on to defeat the Timmins Rock 5-2 Thursday evening in Game 4 of their Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League East Division semifinal at McIntyre Arena.
With the result, the Crunch takes the best-of-seven series 4-0 and will now advance to the division final against either the Kirkland Lake Gold Miners or the Powassan Voodoos.
As the highest scoring club in the NOJHL this season, Cochrane continued their offensive prowess in the first period notching the night’s first two tallies.
League most valuable player Hunter Atchison put the Crunch in front at 6:05 while the surging Dustin Cordeiro collected his seventh goal of the playoffs with 46 seconds left in the frame.
The visitors kept Timmins off the score sheet until the latter stages of the second stanza when a man advantage opportunity allowed Tristan Salesse to make it 2-1 at 15:50.
Building on that, the Rock carried the momentum and came right back netting the equalizer 38 seconds later courtesy of Aaron Kerr to send the two sides into the third period knotted at two.
However it took Cochrane just 63 seconds into the final session to regain the lead as Joseph Thielen banged home his first of the postseason and the eventual game-winner.
The Crunch added another to go up 4-2 a couple shifts later as Brenden Van Sweden, who along with Cordeiro, assisted on the Thielen tally, picked up his second point of the period.
It stayed that way until late going with Timmins pulled goaltender Matthew Nixon in favour of an extra attacker, but it was Cochrane’s Jeremy McNeil who would ice it with an empty netter at 18:35 to close out the series.
Brett Young made 29 saves to record the win for the Crunch while Nixon made 38 saves in defeat for the Rock.
