River Kings Need One More Win To Advance To The 2nd Round

Cornwall Ontario — The Cornwall River Kings opened their first ever LNAH playoff series with convincing back-to-back wins at home over St-Georges.  The Kings dumped the Cool FM 5-2 this afternoon and have a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series.

The visitors struck early just 1:10 into the first on a nice deflection in front from Dany Roussin to take the 1-0 lead.  It was all River Kings after that scoring four unanswered goals.  Eric Meloche got the home team on the board with a power play marker.  Pierre-Luc Faubert scored just over five minutes later to make it a two goal lead.  Two more goals from Francis Lessard and Jonathan Jasper came :18 seconds apart to make it 4-1.  Also in the first Louis-Philippe Lachance dropped the mitts with Alex Bourret looking retribution for yesterday`s bone crunching hit that saw him lay on the ice for several minutes. 

St-Georges start the second period with a new goalie sending Michel Robinson in replacing Jeremy Duschesne. For the second game in a row Francis Lessard and Dave Starensky drop the gloves this time with plenty of punches thrown by both sides. Nicolas Corbeil thought he had a goal with just under four minutes to go but the officials called it back saying he hit it with a high stick.

The Cool FM make things interesting at the 9:31 mark of the third when Alexandre Gagne scores to narrow the gap to two goals.  The goal did not seem to rattle the Kings who looked solid in their own end.  The Cool FM pulled their goalie with 1:36 to go and were unable to get any good chances.  Loic Lacasse was solid in goal making some key saves in each period for a 28 save performance. Pierre-Luc Faubert would seal the win with an empty net goal at 19:47.  The three stars were Mathieu Curadeau (third), Lacasse (second) and Meloche (first).

Before the game the River Kings organization and its fans presented a $1,000 cheque to seven year old Madison Primeau at centre ice to a standing ovation.  The young Cornwall girl is in a lengthy battle with cancer and the money will help the family with travel expenses to and from treatments at CHEO.