Joey Payeur
The Fort Frances Lakers put themselves in the position to direct not only their own playoff adventure, but that of the three remaining SIJHL teams chasing the Bill Salonen Cup.
In blanking the Thunder Bay North Stars 3-0 here Friday night, the Lakers captured the two-game, total-goal series between the top two finishers from the regular season by a 6-4 count.
That gave the regular-season champs first choice of their semi-final opponent.
And in a move that startled nobody, the Lakers opted to challenge the winner of the best-of-seven quarter-final series between the fourth-place English River Miners and fifth-place Dryden Ice Dogs.
That means the second-place North Stars have to face the third-place Minnesota Iron Rangers, who carried over a strong second half of the season by sweeping the Wisconsin Wilderness 4-0 in their quarter-final.
The Miners, meanwhile, made sure it would be them facing the Lakers by edging Dryden 3-2 in Game 6 there Monday to win that series 4-2.
Fort Frances went 10-1 against English River this season, outscoring the first-year squad 59-24, although three of the games were decided by one goal.
So, Wayne Strachan, any concerns about overconfidence on your team’s part?
“It always creeps into a coach’s mind,” admitted the Lakers’ head coach and general manager.
“We spoke [Tuesday] at practice about who our opponent is and the task we have in trying to eliminate them,” he noted.
“We have a goal, and our focus will be on obtaining that goal and be all business for the series,” Strachan added.
English River was led by Vincent Currao and Richard Dartnall, who garnered seven points apiece in the Dryden series.
Six other Miners tallied six points each.
One of those was league MVP finalist John Morales, who led English River with 62 points in 55 games this season.
“John is a very good player who we will have to key on when he is on the ice,” Strachan acknowledged.
“We will try and get our appropriate match-ups against him, but we will be looking to play team defence first in the series and trying to limit their offensive attack,” he noted.
The Miners have a two-headed goaltending monster in Greg Harney and P.D. Melgoza, who each won twice in the quarter-final, with Melgoza winning Games 4 and 5 and Harney making 38 saves in Game 6.
“Both play a similar butterfly style, and we are aware that they are a big strength for their team and success,” said Strachan, who likely will stick with Devin Tappenden between the pipes for Game 1 of the semi-final.
“We will not stray too far from our offensive game plan to attack them as much as possible,” he remarked.
Friday’s win over the visiting North Stars was no cakewalk for the Lakers as the two offensively-gifted teams went scoreless until one second past the halfway mark of the contest.
With Kris Kellaway (charging) and Ryan Walsh (holding) in the sin bin for Thunder Bay, Tanner Fricke served fellow blueliner Kyle Lipinski a one-time opportunity on a silver platter, which Lipinski drilled to the stick side of North Stars’ goalie Eric Mann.
“It was nice to get the first goal and we really got going after that,” noted Lakers’ forward Lucas DeBenedet.
He doubled the lead at 17:59 of the second after converting a pinpoint pass from Mason Meyer, who had stripped a North Stars’ defenceman of the puck just inside Thunder Bay’s blueline to start the play.
“Their player tried to get by ‘Mase’ but he’s got a nice, long reach and got the puck off him and got it to me,” recounted DeBenedet, who called the contest “one of the three best games we’ve played all year.”
“I just had to put it home.”
The Lakers—needing to win by two goals to avoid a series-deciding shootout—then went into lockdown mode in the third, holding Thunder Bay to eight shots.
An empty-netter from Bryce Lipinski with 34 seconds to go iced the victory.
Tappenden was mobbed after the final buzzer to put an exclamation mark on his 25-save shutout.
“It took a while for me to get sharp,” admitted Tappenden, who had lengthy conversations with Strachan during practice last week after what he felt was a sub-par performance in his 4-3 loss in the opener back on March 15.
“But the way the team was playing in front of me, they kept down the number of scoring chances,” he noted.
“It’s as much their shutout as mine.”
“Devin stood tall tonight and the team defence helped a lot,” echoed Strachan.
The Lakers killed off all six North Stars’ power plays Friday night, including two in the final nine minutes, and were a perfect 8-for-8 in that department during the mini series.
It’s the continuation of a spectacular run by the squad’s penalty-killing units, who have not surrendered a power-play goal in their last 12 games (regular-season and playoffs)—going perfect in their last 44-straight short-handed situations.
Meanwhile, Lakers’ captain Patrick Sofer returned to the lineup for the first time since sustaining a shoulder injury Feb. 14.
“I believe Patrick looked fine once he got into the game,” said Strachan.
“He worked hard when he was injured to get back and was skating with the team for almost a two-week period,” he noted.
“So I feel it was an easy adjustment for him to get back into what he does to help the team.”
But defenceman Aaron Wesley-Chisel missed both games of the North Stars’ series.
Strachan confirmed Wesley-Chisel remains out indefinitely with an undisclosed injury that may keep him out of the entire semi-final series against English River.
Game 1 of the series is tentatively scheduled for Friday night at IFK Arena at 7:30 p.m.
