Joey Payeur
With all the players missing from their lineup, the Fort Frances Lakers have plenty of built-in crutches to lean on if they want.
But they will thank you to play the sympathy violin for somebody else.
A recent rash of injuries, coupled with two game misconducts, left the Lakers with only 13 skaters by the end of their 2-0 loss to the Thief River Falls Norskies in SIJHL action here Friday night.
Lakers’ head coach and general manager Wayne Strachan is fully aware the three-time defending SIJHL champs’ current plight isn’t going to elicit a flood of get well soon cards from the rest of the league.
“We’re not going to make excuses,” Strachan said a fourth-straight loss left the Lakers (19-19-2-3) five points back of the fourth-place English River Miners (22-18-1-3) heading into last night’s game here between the two squads (score unavailable at press time).
“We’ve been short-handed the last four, five games but you’ve still got to compete and play your game,” he stressed.
“We can look for excuses all day,” echoed Lakers’ defenceman Maverick Lynes. “But at the end of the day, it’s up to the guys who show up.
“You can’t attribute it to missing bodies,” he remarked. “We have to find a way to put the puck in the net to have a chance to win the game.
“That’s why they keep score.”
Forwards Austin Petrie, Tyler Malpass, and Jaden Gustafson, along with defencemen Brandon Zajicek, Matt Bruinsma, and Connor Keith, all missed Friday night’s game with various ailments.
Needing to call up Midget house league defenceman Izzy Smith just to have five blueliners for the game, the Lakers then made life even more difficult for themselves.
Cody Merritt took a cross-checking penalty and then dropped the gloves with Dylan Dix of the Norskies at 12:31 of the first period, earning the pair an early trip to the showers.
“[Merritt] realized the penalty he took wasn’t the smartest and tried to draw [Dix] in to taking one himself–and then [Dix] drops the gloves first,” noted Strachan.
“With the number of bodies we had on hand, though, maybe it was not the best thing even though he was standing up for himself and his teammates.”
Then with less than one second left in the second, Julian Uhryniuk got the rest of the night off after a check from behind on Mitchell Soderberg.
“It looked more like a boarding penalty and it was no different than the hit on [Dawson] Waddell in the first,” alleged Strachan, referring to Waddell getting sent flying into the boards earlier.
“It was very similar and the one Waddell took I think had more intent.”
Connor Schuster of the third-place Norskies (24-15-2-3), the SIJHL’s hottest team with five-straight wins, thawed the offensive freeze both teams were experiencing at 5:30 of the second.
The play started with Lakers’ blueliner Matt Cheetham being unable to keep the puck in at the Norskies’ blueline.
The resulting 2-on-2 rush saw Lynes give a little too much room to Schuster coming across the line, allowing him to tee up a shot that Lakers’ goalie Brandon Bodnar never moved on as the puck sailed over his glove.
“As far as I know, I didn’t get a piece of it but I’ve got to be more aggressive and take away the shot on that play,” conceded Lynes, who liked how his team stayed in the fight.
“I thought we were the better team in the third [period] and we got our chances, but we just couldn’t score and we struggled to do that lately,” he noted.
That fact is borne out when considering the Lakers have scored just seven goals in their last seven games.
Norskies’ goalie Ryan Buttazzoni, named the Play It Again Sports player-of-the-week on Monday, made two brilliant breakaway saves on Matt Tustin and Waddell to keep it scoreless in the first.
“Those were game-savers,” said Strachan. “That led to a big swing in momentum in the game.
“It was a couple of great opportunities that we just couldn’t get by him.
“That’s when good goalies rise to the top,” Strachan added.
“He [Buttazzoni] definitely played well and is one of the reasons they are where they are in the standings.”
Keaton Huot drained a long-distance empty-netter with two seconds left for the insurance marker.
The Lakers next face the first-place Dryden GM Ice Dogs (35-7-4) tonight.
Then it’s off to Kenora to be prime-time participants in Sportsnet’s “Scotiabank Hockey Day in Canada” broadcast on Saturday.
Fort Frances will play English River at the Kenora Recreation Centre, which will serve as the broadcast headquarters for the annual national celebration of Canada’s game.
Sportsnet host Ron McLean will be live on location throughout the day, and then be joined later by legendary NHL coach Don Cherry for their “Coach’s Corner” segment during the first intermission of the night’s opening NHL broadcast game.
Traditionally, live look-ins on the game going on at the headquarters’ rink are done by the national broadcaster, which means the Lakers and Miners likely will get some on-air time coast to coast.
The Miners yesterday revealed the specially-made jerseys they will wear for the game, which are replicas of one of Cherry’s outlandish jackets he’s known to wear on the weekly show.
The Lakers then will host a Family Day matinee on Monday (Feb. 20) at 2:30 p.m. against the second-place Thunder Bay North Stars (27-14-4).
The two teams will square off again Tuesday night in Thunder Bay to complete the home-and-home series.
