Joey Payeur
Nick Wreggitt and his troops were feasting on the delight of a clutch win—until he received a message that induced an instant case of widespread heartburn.
It was a buffet of dissatisfaction that the head coach of the Fort Frances Midget ‘AA’ Canadians and his squad were left to chew on as they fell 7-4 to Minnetonka (Mn.) in the bronze-medal game of the Spirit of Duluth Tournament on Sunday.
The Canadians had beaten White Bear Lake (Mn.), the defending tourney champs, by a 4-2 count on Saturday evening to finish at 2-0-1 in Pool ‘A’ play to tie Brookings (Mn.) for first place.
The winner of the pool would face the Pool ‘B’ champ for the gold medal while the second-place teams would be relegated to the battle for bronze.
Rather than sit around and wait for the tie-breaker situation to get figured out, Wreggitt took his jubilant team out for a bite to eat.
“We were sitting in Buffalo Wild Wings when I got the call to tell us we were going to be in the third-place game,” Wreggitt recounted.
“The team was more than a little disappointed we didn’t make the championship game,” he noted.
With the Canadians and Brookings having tied their round-robin game 2-2, and both teams with a goals for/goals against differential of +7, it came down to the third tie-breaker of goals against.
The Canadians were solid defensively during pool play with only five goals allowed in three games, but Brookings only surrendered three to wind up advancing to the gold-medal game.
The malaise of missing out on a title shot carried over into the early stages of Sunday’s game as Minnetonka jumped out to a 4-1 lead only seven minutes into the first period—sandwiching two goals each around a marker from Landon Woods.
“We talked in the intermission about being happy about where we were and to chip away because we could still take a trophy home,” said Wreggitt.
The Canadians did just that.
Christian Audette netted a short-handed marker just 11 seconds into the middle frame before Kyle Knapp banked one in from behind the net off a Minnetonka blueliner’s shin pad minutes later to cut the gap to 4-3.
After Minnetonka went back up by two, Damon Smith delivered what Wreggitt called “a beauty of a breakaway goal” later in the frame to make it 5-4 after two.
“In the first three minutes of the third, we had some momentum and really put the pressure on,” recalled Wreggitt, whose team persevered despite having lost Domi Allan to a back injury in the first period and Tyler Hamm to a knee ailment in the third.
Minnetonka’s top sniper proved too much for the Canadians to handle, though, as he scored twice in the third to ice the victory.
“When their captain was out there, the puck never left his stick unless he shot it,” said Wreggitt.
“We had to shorten our bench and I think we ran out of gas.
“A lot of our younger players got put in a tough situation for themselves having to play those kind of [extra] minutes,” he added.
“[Allan and Hamm] were big losses.”
The Canadians started their first tournament of the season off right with a 6-1 triumph over the host squad from Duluth.
“The boys were hungry to get going,” noted Wreggitt.
“Other than a couple of exhibition games in mid-October, we had been off six weeks but they never really showed it.”
Allan and Hamm each scored twice in the first period while Knapp added a pair in the second.
Duluth avoided the shutout by getting one past Canadians’ goalie Jesse Quesnel on the power play five minutes into the third.
“Hats off to Duluth’s goalie,” Wreggitt said of Peter Rutka as the Canadians outshot their hosts 41-12.
“If it wasn’t for him, the score would have been way worse . . . he stopped five breakaways and a penalty shot.”
The tie with Brookings was “evenly matched” in Wreggitt’s eyes, although his team appeared to deflate somewhat after giving up the opening goal seven minutes into the first.
“We didn’t really show up for the rest of the first and a good part of the second,” admitted Wreggitt, whose team sprang to life when Brandon Kocuiba converted a Knapp feed seven minutes into the second.
“We definitely got some energy out of that.”
Knapp then made it 2-1 seven minutes into the third against goalie Tristan Hokenson before Brookings netted the equalizer 1:30 later in a thriller that lost much of its spark in the final minutes.
“Each team took two penalties in the final minutes and it really took the flow out of the game,” noted Wreggitt, whose team was outshot 29-24.
The showdown against White Bear Lake was judged by Wreggitt as his team’s best game of the weekend against a team with which it had some history.
“White Bear Lake is usually consistently in the top five of the Minnesota league,” he noted.
“We tied them last year and were the only team that didn’t lose to them.
“This game was everything you could want in a hockey game,” Wreggitt added.
After trailing 1-0 in the first, Hamm and Knapp netted power-play goals two minutes apart to put the Canadians up 2-1.
Izzy Smith’s short-handed marker was the lone goal of the second.
White Bear Lake replied two minutes into the third and ramped up the pressure big-time on the Canadians.
“They came at us with everything,” said Wreggitt, whose team was outshot 39-21 overall.
“But I give a lot of credit to our guys . . . they shut them down and limited open areas so that all their shots came from far away.”
Eric Pitkanen added an empty-netter with 15 second left to ice the win.
The Canadians next will host a four-team tournament this weekend at the Memorial Sports Centre.
Fort Frances opens play Friday at 7:15 p.m. against the Assiniboine Park Rangers (Winnipeg), then will face the Grand Forks (N.D.) Stallion on Saturday at 9:15 a.m.
They’ll close out round-robin play against the St. James Canadians (Winnipeg) at 8 p.m.
Sunday will see the third- and fourth-place teams square off for bronze at 12:15 p.m.
The top two squads then will clash in the title game immediately afterwards (around 2:15 p.m.)
