TIMMINS, Ont. – The Timmins Rock erupted for five period goals en route to an 8-1 victory over the Iroquois Falls Eskis Saturday in Game 1 of their Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League East Division quarter-final series at McIntyre Arena.
Timmins will attempt to close out the best-of-three series Sunday while Iroquois Falls attempts to stave off elimination at home when Game 2 goes at 5 p.m. at Jus Jordan Arena.
In Saturday’s contest, the Eskis opened the scoring seven minutes in as Blake Holowaty staked the visitors to the early lead during a man advantage opportunity.
The Rock came right back however notching the equalizer just 10 seconds later on a Ryan Theriault effort.
Timmins built on that from there striking four more times before the first period was complete on even strength markers from Wayne Mathieu and Jordan Rendle along with a late power play tally courtesy of Rendle and a final marker from Aaron Kerr.
Zachary Kercz extended the Rock cushion with his first of the playoffs as the CCM second team all-star struck 74 seconds into the middle stanza.
The man advantage allowed the hosts to add another at 14:26 of the third from Kercz before Jace Soroko round out the scoring with three seconds to go.
Rendle also had two assists for a four-point night while Joe Olson, Landen Matechuk and Bain Cunningham also supplied two helpers apiece for the winners.
Logan Ferrington made 32 stops to earn the triumph for Timmins.
Matthew Camilleri started for Iroquois Falls and suffered the loss allowing four against on 10 attempts in nearly 18 minutes of work.
Joe Sheppard entered in relief for the Eskis after the fourth goal against and finished by saving 32 of the 36 shots he saw.
NOJHL quarter-final playoff schedule
East Division
No. 4 Timmins Rock vs. No. 5 Iroquois Falls Eskis
Rock leads best-of-three series 1-0
Game 1: Timmins 8 Iroquois Falls 1
Game 2: Sunday, March 13 @ Iroquois Falls 5:30 p.m. (Jus Jordan)
Game 3*: Wednesday, March 16 @ Timmins 7:30 p.m. (McIntyre)
*- if necessary
