Thunder Bay and Dryden ended week six tied in first place with identical 10-2-1 records. The teams exchanged 5-4 overtime outcomes to snap each other’s win streaks. The Stars have points in 11 straight. Dryden has points in nine straight.
Sioux Lookout won both of their games over Ironwood and reside in third place, six points back of first.
Kam River accepted the resignation of head coach Dwight Lee and are two wins into Vern Ray’s interim period as bench boss. Jett Mintenko is fifth in league production, the only player other than a Dryden or Thunder Bay player to be in top 11.
Fort Frances is still above .500, and still has a plus/minus of +3. They are winless in four.
Red Lake dropped a home pair to the Walleye and have a won/lost percentage of .417.
Ironwood is on a three-game slide.
Kenora is winless in six.
As mentioned, Dryden has five players in the top 11, as does Thunder Bay. Dryden’s McLaren Paulsen leads the SI in points with 27. North Stars forward Tyler Jordan’s 11 goals leads the league in that department. Thunder Bay defenceman Tag Bryson has 19 assists. Seven players have 20 points or more. Paulsen, Jordan and Mintenko are the only players with 10 or more goals.
Dryden’s Kellan Mooney, Thunder Bay’s Ben Laurette, and Kam River’s Ashton Sadauskas lead the SIJHL in goalie wins with six.
Matthew Ofukany of Sioux Lookout has a GAA of 1.80 and a SV% of .935. Ironwood’s Kole Kronstedt has 610 goalie minutes.
The top powerplay belongs to Fort Frances at 34.9%. Thunder Bay’s penalty kill stands at 42 kills in 43 penalties, 97.7%. Dryden has four shorthanded goals. The league overall is 21.4% on the PP.
Emmanuel Nkombou (Dryden) leads the league in penalty minutes with 65. Mintenko and Jack Wood of Fort Frances are both in the top 20 and have zero penalty minutes.
Payton Hu (Dryden) has the longest points streak, six games, with 16 points in that stretch. Notably, Marcellus Francis of Thunder Bay, has six goals and 10 points in his first four games played.
So far 220 players have suited up to play in the league this year.
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