Logan Durno scored a pair of goals to appear to take over the Nova Scotia Junior Hockey League scoring race Sunday evening in Windsor as he scored on 1.5 breakaways while Nathaniel Wotton added a third for the East Hants Penguins as the Pens blanked the Valley Maple Leafs 3-0. Unbeknown to Durno at the time, the Eskasoni Jr. Eagles and Pictou County Scotians had started earlier in Trenton and Nate Supryka of the Scotians collected eight assists for Pictou as they won their second in a row over the weekend, 9-2 over the Eskasoni Jr. Eagles, to take the scoring lead away from Durno by a single point going into play this weekend. Supryka now has 14 goals and 22 assists and 36 points while Durno has 13 goals and 22 assists for 35 points. First the Pictou-Eskasoni Game:
Pictou 9 Eskasoni 2
The Scotians showed no mercy on the Jr. Eagles whatsoever as they took period leads of 2-0 and 7-1 and never looked back. The win now gives them 23 points in the Sid Rowe Division, 4 behind the third place Port Hawkesbury Strait Pirates and seven ahead of the Jr. Eagles for the fourth and final playoff spot. In what might be the only negative connotation for the Scotians is that they have now played 28 games and have only four games left in their regular season schedule while both the Strait and Jr. Eagles each have four games in hand on the Scotians. In Sunday’s game in Trenton, Matt Carson picked up where he left off Saturday in Membertou scoring four more times including the game’s opening two goals, the first 22 seconds after the opening face-off. Thomas Kennaley who also scored four goals for the Scotians netted the game winner 49 seconds into the middle period for his first of the game. Carson added his final two of the game to put the Scotians up 7-1 and then Kennaley after scoring his second in the middle period scored both Pictou goals in the third. Camdyn Burgess scored the other Scotians goal. James Jones scored both Eskasoni goals. The Jr. Eagles were outshot 57-29.
East Hants 3 Valley Maple Leafs 0
With the exception of the opening 12 minutes of the second period, the Valley Maple Leafs fought East Hants to the limit before finally losing 3-0. Durno’s two goals, his first on a 15 foot wrist shot directly in front of the net which eluded Jayden Croft in the Leafs net gave the Penguins a 1-0 lead after the first. Then on a partial breakaway but enough for Durno to significantly control the puck saw the Penguins go up 2-0 before Alexander Wotton on a seemingly harmless shot from the blue line but Croft was blinded by 3 players swarming the Leafs net and the puck got past him for the third Penguins goal. There was no scoring in the third. The goaltending by both teams was extra sharp as Marcus Pettipas recorded his second shut-out of the season in the Pens net as he turned away all 39 shots he faced while Jayden Croft who made at least four spectacular saves in the early going to keep his team pumped stopped 36 of 39 shots. Jayson Hanson recorded a pair of assists for the Pens who won their 20th game in 25 starts and now lead the Capstone Colts by four points and the South Shore Lumberjacks by six in the race for first place in the Fred Fox Division. The Lumberjacks now have three game in hand on the Penguins and have a couple of huge games coming up versus East Hants, this Saturday in Bridgewater and Friday Feb 2nd in Lantz.
GrayJay Sports