Jamie Mountain
The Fort Frances Lakers had been on quite the run over the past two weeks.
After Thursday night’s 9-2 romp over the last-place Minnesota Iron Rangers in Hoyt Lakes extended the team’s winning streak to a season-high four games, it appeared the Lakers were at the top of their game.
It was also Fort Frances’ third-straight victory against Minnesota.
But that all came to a crashing halt here Saturday night at the hands of the third-place Thunder Bay North Stars.
The North Stars roared out of the gate–building a 3-0 lead by early in the second period–then used that momentum to escape with a narrow 5-4 victory at the Ice For Kids Arena.
Alexander Erwin (9:58) and Turner Santin (15:36) notched first-period markers to stake the visitors to a 2-0 lead after 20 minutes.
Thunder Bay rookie Keighan Gerrie then beat Brett Akins 4:09 into the second to leave the Lakers facing a three-goal deficit.
“If you have to look at things, our first period hurts us in giving up the two goals, and having the opportunities we had and not being able to cash in on at least one or two in the 15 shots we had,” Lakers’ head coach and general manager Wayne Strachan admitted afterwards.
But as has been the course for the Lakers over the last few weeks, they didn’t quit skating and started to push back later in the period.
Ian Jarvis gave the squad some life when he went bar-down on former Laker Brandon Bodnar for a short-handed beauty at 8:46 for his 10th of the season.
Jack Bernie then struck less than a minute later, finishing off a feed from Ian Tookenay and Adam Withers, to make it a one-goal game.
After the North Stars started to become undisciplined and gifted the Lakers a two-man advantage, defenceman Jack Dunnell made them pay by blasting a shot top-shelf over Bodnar to knot the score at 3-3 at 13:03.
“I thought we started to play with the urgency we needed, and we started to pressure pucks and cause turnovers,” Strachan said about the second period.
“Something we didn’t do in the first period was have that hunger to get to the net and put some pressure on ‘Bods’ [Brandon Bodnar] to make saves.
“I thought we did a better job in the second period of guys being around the net and, obviously, bringing the puck to the net to create opportunities,” he added.
Jake Behse put the North Stars back in front just 40 seconds into the third, but the Lakers once again proved resilient and tied it at 4-4 at 5:31 on Jarvis’ second of the night.
The North Stars didn’t fold, though, as Alex Maticic netted the eventual game-winner at 9:25 past a dejected Akins to cap the scoring and seal the victory.
Akins, who started the past two games between the pipes as Ismael Ralsten was away from the team following the death of his grandfather, finished with 29 saves in defeat.
Bodnar stopped 37 shots in a winning effort.
Lakers’ captain Julian Uhryniuk, meanwhile, has sat out the last two games dealing with an upper-body injury, but Strachan is hopeful he’ll make a speedy recovery.
“Hopefully he won’t be out too much longer,” Strachan said after Saturday’s loss,
noting Uhryniuk was to be re-evaluated on Monday.
“Obviously we miss him and we’d like to get him back at least, maybe, for the [SIJHL] ‘Showcase.’
“We won’t push him hard here,” Strachan added.
“We’ll let him get back to 100 percent but hopefully he’ll be around for the ‘Showcase.'”
The Lakers will host the 2018 SIJHL “Showcase” on Jan. 30-31 for the first time in team history, which will see all six league teams play two games apiece over those two day in front of college, junior, and pro scouts.
But they first need to take care of business the rest of this week.
The Lakers, sitting in fifth place with a 10-21-1-3 record, faced the first-place Thief River Falls Norskies here last night (the outcome wasn’t known as of press time), then will host third-place Thunder Bay again this Friday at 7:30 p.m.
Then they’ll cap the week with a game in Thief River Falls on Saturday night.
Strachan knows these games will be a tough task for his squad, and that they’ll have to improve in various areas to come out ahead.
“The schedule’s not getting any easy easier,” he conceded. “Throughout the week we’ll just prepare, we’ll have tomorrow [Sunday] off, and get a good skate in on Monday morning.
“Some of the things we’ll try to improve on from tonight [Saturday] is boxing out around the front of the net,” Strachan noted.
“I thought in the first period we didn’t do a good job of backchecking and a lot of their opportunities were from late men coming in.
“So we’ll run through things like that and we’ll work on our power play, which I think has improved immensely through the second half here, but we’ll continue to work on it and get ready for Thief River,” he added.
