NORTHERN ONTARIO JUNIOR HOCKEY LEAGUE
NOJHL NETWORK MEDIA UPDATE
Release Date: Monday, Sept. 19, 2016
Bowman’s OT beauty lifts Voodoos over Crunch
POWASSAN, Ont. – Parker Bowman’s first Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League goal was a beauty as he wired home the game-winner, with 53 seconds left in the first overtime, to lift the Powassan Voodoos to a 3-2 come from behind victory over the Cochrane Crunch Monday evening at the Powassan Sportsplex.
A tight-checking opening 20 minutes saw Powassan out shoot Cochrane 9-7 with both Voodoos starter Nate McDonald and Crunch netminder Leighton Williams keeping opposing shooters at bay.
The visitors cracked the goose egg 5:49 into the second stanza when Braeden Cross buried his team-leading sixth goal of the season.
Cochrane then upped their lead to two at 12:11 of the period as Rory Milne struck on the power play as he finished off the work of Cross and Brandon McReynolds.
Powassan got one back before the session was complete thanks to Gary Mantz finding the back of the net at 14:49.
Building on that, the Voodoos notched the equalizer early in the third when Andy Baker beat Williams for his third at 2:01.
The well-played contest tightened up from there as the two teams battled their way through the remainder of regulation and into extra time.
In the latter stages of the first OT, Ryan Bazzana corralled the puck as it came around the end boards near his own blue line.
From there he shovelled it over to Bowman who proceeded to rush up the left side of the ice on a two-on-one and deftly labelled the game-winner into the top right hand corner over the outstretched glove of Williams to seal the comeback win for Powassan.
With the triumph the Voodoos improved to 3-1-0-0 while the Crunch slipped to 4-0-1-0.
McDonald stopped 40 of the 42 shots fired his way in registering the decision for Powassan while Williams’ efforts allowed his club to earn a point as he made 31 saves in the OT setback.
