North Stars ready for playoffs after sweep

The Soo North Stars concluded their portion of the Great North Midget League regular season with a weekend sweep of the Sudbury Nickel Capital Wolves at the John Rhodes Community Centre.

With their first place finish, the North Stars will now gear up to face the eighth place New Liskeard Cubs in the first round of the playoffs.

On Saturday night, the North Stars defeated the Wolves 4-2 before picking up a 7-4 victory on Sunday afternoon.

Brett Thompson scored twice in Sunday's win while Matt Amadio and Chris Hales each scored once and set up another. Luke O'Brien, Drew MacMillan and Jarrett Burton also scored while Anthony Colizza picked up three assists. Kevin Smith, Mike Rivard and Micky Sartoretto recorded two helpers each.

Rivard scored twice and assisted on another to pace the North Stars on Saturday. Thompson scored once and set up another while Colizza also found the back of the net and Kevin Closs recorded two assists.

With a 32-2-1-1 record for 66 points, the North Stars captured the regular season title by a comfortable nine point margin over Sudbury (28-7-0-1).

New Liskeard, in contrast, squeaked into the playoffs by a point over Kapuskasing with an 8-26-2-0 record for 18 points and are losers of three straight games.

The North Stars will now practise this week in preparation for the best-of-five GNML quarterfinal series beginning Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Rhodes.

Game two is scheduled for Sunday at 1 p.m. before the series shifts to New Liskeard for games three and four, if necessary.

In other quarterfinal matchups, Sudbury meets seventh place Rayside Balfour, third seeded Valley East plays sixth seeded Kirkland Lake while fourth place North Bay battles fifth place Timmins.