Lucas Punkari
With the excitement of last Tuesday’s dramatic 3-2 overtime win over the Dryden Ice Dogs in Game 7 of the SIJHL semi-finals fading, the Fort Frances Lakers have been busy this past week getting ready for the Bill Salonen Cup final against the top-seeded Minnesota Wilderness, which gets underway Friday night in Cloquet.
“We are going to head down there looking to win Game 1,” said Lakers’ head coach and general manager Wayne Strachan.
“It’s going to be tough, and we know that it’ll take everything that we have in order to be successful,” he warned.
“But if we go in and work the way that we have in our last two games against Dryden, that will give us a great opportunity.”
The two-time defending champion Wilderness are heavy favourites heading into the best-of-seven final—coming off a four-game sweep of the Minnesota Iron Rangers in that semi-final series and currently the second-best team in the CJHL top 20 rankings.
The Lakers have had success against the Wilderness this season, however, having beaten them three times, including a pair of wins in Cloquet.
“We know that we can beat this team but it’s going to come down to how bad we want it,” stressed forward Jordan Christianson, who was a member of last year’s team that lost to the Wilderness in seven games in the SIJHL final.
“We have to go in there with a physical style of play, perform well defensively, and we will need to use our speed and our skill,” noted blueliner Jon Carlson.
To get into their much-anticipated rematch with the Wilderness, the Lakers staged an impressive comeback against the Ice Dogs in Game 7 here last Tuesday, as scoring twice in the final four minutes of regulation to force overtime.
“I don’t think the boys ever stopped believing that they could come back,” Strachan noted.
“We had numerous opportunities to get on the board and we carried the play for the last 30 to 35 minutes, so we just kept saying to one another that something is going to come,” he added.
That something was created by Carlson, whose power-play shot from the point spoiled the shutout bid of Ice Dogs’ goalie Eric Sczymcyk, which set the stage for his dramatic game-tying goal on a scramble in front of the net with just 15 seconds to go.
“Before we scored those goals, the energy level on the bench was just incredible and we had a ton of confidence that we were going to come back,” Carlson remarked.
“On the first goal, Kevin [Kurm] cut back and he made an incredible pass to me, and I was just fortunate enough to have the puck go in.
“Kevin just about tied it up for us at the end, and I was lucky to get a nice light pass in front to get the tying goal there, which is something that Jordan and I have been working on for the last little bit,” he added.
Christianson then completed the comeback just past the six-minute mark of the first overtime, tucking the puck into the net and sending the Ice For Kids Arena crowd into a frenzy.
“Just when you think you’ve had the best moment in your career, it gets even better,” he smiled.
“A shot had just come from the point [from Joel Bogacki] and the rebound came right to me,” Christianson recalled.
“I was surprised that I had that much time to shoot,” he admitted. “And once I knew that it was in the back of the net, it was a great feeling.”
While Lakers celebrated Christianson’s heroics, the Ice Dogs were in stunned disbelief at their end of the ice after a nearly picture-perfect road performance had vanished in the span of a few minutes.
“When they scored the first goal, I still wasn’t overly concerned as it was on the power play,” said Ice Dogs’ head coach Paul MacLean.
“We had the puck deep in their zone late in the third, but it quickly turned around in their favour as we might have been a little bit overly aggressive on the attack and I don’t think Eric really saw the puck when they tied it up,” he added.
“In overtime, I felt we played fine and the guys kept their heads on despite what happened at the end, but it was just one of those games,” MacLean reasoned.
After opening up the SIJHL final in Cloquet on Friday, the Lakers will host Game 2 of the series Sunday night at the Ice For Kids Arena.
Game 3 will be held in Spooner next Wednesday (April 17) while Game 4 will take go here on Friday, April 19.
The Wilderness will host Game 5, if necessary, on Saturday, April 20, with the Lakers entertaining their rivals here for a Game 6 on Monday, April 22.
A seventh and deciding game, if required, is slated for Wednesday, April 24 in Cloquet.
All seven games get underway at 7:30 p.m.
The winner of this year’s Bill Salonen Cup then will represent the SIJHL at the Dudley Hewitt Cup, which will be held April 30-May 4 in North Bay.
On the health front, it’s quite possible Simon Desrosiers could return to the Lakers’ blueline after he was forced to the sidelines with a concussion sustained early in the semi-final series against Dryden.
But Strachan said the team would take a wait-and-see approach in practice this week before determining if Desrosiers can go against the Wilderness.
