With six games in hand over the Northern Michigan Black Bears, the Soo Thunderbirds had an opportunity to move up in the Northern Ontario Junior League's Western Division standings with a win.
What they got was a strong performance by local product and Blind River goaltender Kevin King as the Thunderbirds dropped a 2-1 decision to the Beavers on Wednesday night at the John Rhodes Community Centre.
In the opening period, the teams looked as though they were going to play to a scoreless period but Dustin McLeod converted a feed from Thomas Laplante at 17:32 to give the Beavers a 1-0 lead.
The Beavers wasted no time building on their lead in the second period as Kittredge Hamlin scored his fifth goal of the season 3:40 into the period. Laplante had an opportunity to pad the lead but hit the post on a partial breakaway late in the period.
In the third period, the Thunderbirds tried desperately to get back into the game, but some big saves from King at key points during the period helped the Beavers preserve the lead.
Tom Vernelli broke the shutout bid with 48 seconds left to play, but it wasn't enough as the Beavers held on for the victory.
King was the star of the show stopping 54 Thunderbird shots en route to the win and being named the game's first star. Casey Mapes stopped 20 shots for the Thunderbirds in the game.
Thunderbirds coach Jim Capy was impressed with the goaltending of King but was also pleased with the goaltending performance he received from Mapes in the game. Capy said one of the reasons his club couldn't beat King was due to lack of traffic in front of the net.
"That's the best goaltending performance I've seen all year," Capy said following the game. "We were pleased with our goaltending. (Mapes) made a couple of key saves in the third period to keep us in the game. We really didn't get any traffic in the first two periods. We generated 37 shots in the first two periods but a lot were from the perimeter."
Capy was disappointed with the loss considering the fact that his club could have used the two points to move out of a first place tie with Northern Michigan in the Western Division standings.
"We gave up some valuable points," Capy said. "This is a team we might be meeting up with in the playoffs so we can't give them anything to build on. I think we just didn't respect the team we were playing tonight.
"We didn't give the same effort as we did in the game against the USA Under-18's (on Saturday night). You've still got to respect the team you're playing against. We didn't have enough guys who gave us 100 per cent."
The Thunderbirds won't have too much time to recover from the loss as they are set to face the Sudbury Northern Wolves, who currently sit in top spot in the Eastern Division standings, on Friday night beginning at 7:30