Joey Payeur
It was 24 hours of their lives they never will want to repeat again.
The Fort Frances Lakers were among the mourners at Our Lady of Lourdes Church at Couchiching yesterday morning for the funeral of former assistant general manager and assistant coach Grant Perreault, who passed away Saturday at age 40 after a four-year battle with cancer.
The night before, the Lakers saw their three-year run as SIJHL champs come to a crashing halt when Derek McPhail scored with 41.1 seconds left in overtime to give the visiting Dryden GM Ice Dogs a 2-1 win and a 4-0 sweep of their best-of-seven semi-final series.
“There was a lot of emotion in our room as we tried to get focused for tonight,” Lakers’ head coach and general manager Wayne Strachan after the heart-breaking loss that also snapped a streak of four-straight seasons in which the Lakers sent the Ice Dogs packing in the playoffs.
“We talked about being a family and being a tight unit, and we thought it was something we could rally around and honour Grant tonight with a big win,” he noted.
With double overtime looming, Braeden Allkins took a shot from the right circle that Lakers’ goalie Brandon Bodnar deflected high into the air with his blocker.
The puck was corralled by Kristopher Hamlin in front of the net, who delivered a no-look backhand pass that found McPhail sneaking in the back door.
With the Lakers’ skaters and Bodnar all watching Hamlin, nobody saw McPhail before it was too late, as he one-timed a shot into the empty side of the net to send his team into the SIJHL final for the third-straight year.
“It’s a huge weight off my chest,” a tired but thrilled McPhail said about finally exorcizing his Lakers’ demons.
“I’ve come to battle these guys for the last three, four, I don’t even know how many years,” he noted.
“It feels good.”
The game was scoreless until 2:49 into the second period when Nic Noseworthy sailed a shot from the right point high to the stick side of Bodnar–one of only two pucks that eluded him in a 49-save effort.
With time ticking down on the season, Lakers’ captain Dylan Kooner did all he could to extend the junior careers of himself and five of his teammates for at least one more game.
Kooner took a pass from Dawson Waddell and rocketed down the right wing, then got a step on his defender to create just enough room to wire a shot past Ice Dogs’ goalie Patrick Zubick at 5:51 of the third.
The Lakers then came literally within a quarter-inch of winning the game with 5:30 to go in regulation time.
A shot by Maverick Lynes was stopped by Zubick, with the puck caroming off his pad and incredibly landing on its edge and sitting on the goalline before Dryden’s Jacen Bracko cleared it out of danger in the nick of time.
When all was said and done, a relentless Ice Dogs’ forechecking scheme, combined with a pristine penalty-killing strategy that held the Lakers’ power play to a meagre 2-for-27 mark in the series, was too much for the Lakers to overcome.
“It’s been a tough couple of days but we supported each other really good and I think we handled it pretty well,” noted Kooner, who scored the Lakers’ only goal in each of the last two games.
“Being a Laker these past three years has been everything to me.”
Dryden now may have to wait as long as next Wednesday to find out who it will face in the final.
The Thunder Bay North Stars and the English River Miners only got their semi-final series underway on Saturday.
English River grabbed a 2-1 series lead with a 5-2 victory at home last night.
The Miners won Game 1 by a 5-3 score, then got dumped 9-2 in Game 2 on Sunday.
