Lucas Punkari
As his team came to grips with the fact their season had just ended, Fort Frances Lakers’ head coach and general manager Wayne Strachan made it quite clear that his squad shouldn’t feel sorry for themselves after falling 3-2 in double overtime to the Minnesota Wilderness in Game 6 of the SIJHL final Monday night at the ’52 Canadians Arena here.
“Throughout the year, this team has found ways to win hockey games that maybe we shouldn’t have, and throughout the playoffs we really exemplified that,” Strachan said.
“Tonight [Monday] we laid everything on the line,” he stressed. “And while it’s tough to lose on a bad break in overtime, we shouldn’t be hanging our heads down as we should be proud of what we’ve accomplished.
“We pushed that team to the brink, I don’t think many would have thought of ahead of time, and there were a lot of people throughout this year that didn’t expect us to be in that spot, so I can’t take anything away from these guys,” Strachan added.
“They have a lot of heart and character, and they persevered through the tough times throughout the entire season, and I couldn’t be happier to have coached this group of kids.”
Out on the ice, meanwhile, it was pure euphoria for the Wilderness, who earned their third-straight Bill Salonen Cup but first as a Cloquet-based team after capturing their first two league crowns in Spooner, Wis.
“It’s obviously a great feeling to win a title in any fashion, but it’s always fun and exciting to do it in overtime after playing in a great game,” said Wilderness head coach and general manager Rod Aldoff.
“It was a good series between both teams that could have went either way, and to win it like we did tonight was really exciting for the kids,” he added.
Monday’s game ended in a rather bizarre way early in the second overtime after both teams went back and forth down the ice during the first extra frame but were unable to break the deadlock.
Lakers’ goalie Talor Joseph tried to move the puck behind his own net just past the minute-and-a-half mark but was unable to make a clean exchange with teammate Owen Stauber, which allowed Wilderness forward Jeremy Johnson to slide the puck home and give his team the championship.
“We knew that this goalie was a little bit shaky in playing the puck, so I just crashed the net hard and I able to bang that loose puck off him and into the net,” explained Johnson, who was a member of last year’s Wilderness squad that defeated the Lakers in seven games in the SIJHL final.
“It was kind of a [cruddy] goal to score to win it, but it was one of those games where a strange bounce was going to end it in overtime,” he reasoned.
Joseph’s miscue was an unfortunate blemish to what had been a sterling effort by the 18-year-old, who turned aside 37 shots to keep the Lakers in the game on many occasions.
“He’s a great goalie that is going to do some very good things his career,” said Stauber, who was one of many to console Joseph following the game.
“He held us in a lot of the games in this series, and he was a huge difference-maker for us,” he stressed.
After Nick McCormack gave the Wilderness the lead early in the first period, the Lakers used the power-play to their advantage late in the frame when Kevin Kurm tied the score at 1-1.
The hosts then jumped ahead at the four-minute mark of the second when Stauber fired a shot from the point on the man-advantage that eluded Wilderness goalie Gordy Diefel.
“Those goals were pretty close to being the exact same play,” noted Stauber, who drew an assist on Kurm’s goal in the first period.
“On the first goal, [John] Dora shot the puck and it got knocked down in front to cause a rebound, and on my goal it just went right in the net,” he noted.
But the Wilderness bounced back in the third when Joseph Drapluk pounced on a loose puck in front of the net to tie the game at 2-2 with a little under nine minutes to go in regulation time.
“In those first two periods, we were not playing our style of hockey,” said Wilderness captain Mike Dietrich, who was named the SIJHL playoff MVP shortly after Monday’s game.
“We were told between the second and third period that we needed to play our style of game in order to win this thing,” he noted. “And after we tied it up, we knew that we were going to do that.”
After Drapluk’s game-tying goal, both teams played back-and-forth hockey at a frantic pace in order to net the game-winner in the ’52 Canadians Arena, which was used for Game 6 because the ice was taken out of the Ice For Kids Arena in preparation for the Fort Frances Chamber of Commerce’s Business & Community Expo later this week.
“It was a little different to play in that rink but we had prepared for it ahead of time with a couple of practices before this game,” Stauber noted.
“Since it’s smaller in there, it led to a lot of up-and-down hockey, and as a result it ended up being a very intense game.”
“We talked about how things were going to be quick in this rink, especially when compared to our rink in Cloquet as it is close to being at Olympic-size,” said Aldoff.
“We made some adjustments as the game went on, and we were able to make out all right.”
The Wilderness had a chance to wrap up the series on home ice Saturday night but the Lakers staved off elimination with a 3-1 victory in Game 5 of the best-of-seven affair.
“We were ready to play and we knew what he had to do,” Strachan said.
“We kind of boxed them out from in front of our net and we slowed them down in our neutral zone with kind of a trap forecheck,” he explained.
“The guys did a great job at it, and the focus was just there throughout.”
Kurm and Jordan Christianson each had a goal and an assist for the Lakers, with Cody Wickstrom chipping in a pair of assists.
Stauber also scored for the visitors while Dan Divis had the lone goal for the Wilderness, which was the lone blemish in a 54-save performance by Joseph.
“Talor was stellar again in net and he was making key saves when he had to,” Strachan lauded after Game 5.
“He made a couple of big saves off of rebounds in tight with his feet, and that gave us the opportunity to win the hockey game.”
Saturday’s victory came a day after the Wilderness had earned a 5-3 win at the Ice For Kids Arena, which gave the second-ranked team in the entire CJHL a 3-1 series lead.
That affair saw Dietrich, named the SIJHL’s most valuable player this season, turn in one of the most impressive performances in league history by scoring all five of his team’s goals.
“That’s not something that happens every night,” Dietrich admitted.
“I wouldn’t have been able do this without the guys behind me, and especially my linemates Jake Larson and Michael McKinnon, as we have a really good chemistry together,” he noted.
Davis Smith scored twice for the Lakers in the loss while Kurm netted the other goal.
As a result of their third-straight Bill Salonen Cup, the Wilderness now are preparing to represent the SIJHL at the Dudley Hewitt Cup, which will take place April 30-May 4 in North Bay.
Having failed to make the playoff round in their previous two trips to the tournament, the Wilderness will be looking to knock off the host North Bay Trappers (NOJHL), the defending tournament champion Soo Thunderbirds (NOJHL), and the OJHL champion St. Michael’s Buzzers in order to earn a spot in this year’s Royal Bank Cup national tournament.
“We played the Soo Thunderbirds earlier this year and did well against them, and we know that both North Bay and St. Michael’s have been playing some solid hockey in their leagues,” Aldoff noted.
“Some of the guys on this team have been to this tournament before, so they know what they are getting into already, which is always good,” he added.
“At the end of the day, though, it’s about playing smart and disciplined hockey at this time of the year, and that is going to be a major key for us.”
As for the Lakers, Strachan and the rest of his coaching staff soon will begin the process of working out the squad for the 2013/14 season as they’ll be losing five forwards (Smith, Christianson, Jacob Nolan, Brendan Cawston, and captain Merritt Rysavy) and goalie Tanner Hamilton to graduation.
“We will have to see what those that are eligible to come back have as their intentions for next season, but we can return a good core of our team that brought us success this year,” Strachan said.
“On defence, we can potentially have seven guys come back, which would put us in a good spot right away,” he remarked.
“And we could have two very goaltenders back [in Joseph and Jameson Shortreed], along with several top forwards.
“We’ve already started to work on our recruiting process, and we will be getting a game plan together here in the next couple of weeks towards next season,” added Strachan.
