Staff
Sunday afternoons in the fall usually are the domain of the football fan.
Yesterday, the Fort Frances Lakers would have needed a touchdown and two-point conversion just to stay even with the Fort William North Stars.
The league-leading Stars used eight different goal scorers to run their winning streak to 10 games by ripping the Lakers 8-0 in front of 252 spectators at the Ice For Kids Arena.
Fort William (16-1) was working with less rest after going to overtime to beat the host Dryden Ice Dogs 5-4 on Saturday while the Lakers had a day off after a 4-3 shootout loss to the K&A Wolverines here Friday night.
But it was Fort Frances (5-10-3), now on a three-game losing skid, which dozed through the first period yesterday and found itself down 4-0 before the game was 12 minutes old.
Olivier Morin’s marker at 2:41 was followed by a two-goal burst courtesy of Dan Usiski at the seven-minute mark and a power-play tally by Randall Hanlan 56 seconds later, which ended Lakers’ goalie Jameson Shortreed’s day early (10 saves on 13 shots).
T.J. Pocock came on in relief, but Brennan Wright welcomed him with a goal at 11:39 to stretch the lead further.
Ryan Magill had the lone goal of the second to make it 5-0 before the Stars piled it on with three more in an ill-tempered third, which featured five fights in a span of 4:07 beginning near the midway point of the stanza that led to 10 players receiving game misconducts.
Riley Marsh, Trevor Gamache, and Casey Dean completed the offensive assault for Fort William, with Hanlan finishing with five points to pace a Stars’ attack that saw the visitors outshoot the home side 55-26.
Guillaume Piche earned his first shutout of the season for Fort William and improved to 11-1 on the year while dropping his goals against average to 2.47.
Pocock did his best to try and keep the score respectable with 37 stops.
On Friday night, the Wolverines (5-12-4) tied the game with 5:55 left in regulation on David Dawd’s hat-trick goal, then won it when Hartwell Marable notched the lone goal of the shootout.
Colton Kennedy scored in the first and second period for the Lakers to give him a team-best 13 goals this season while Tim Hennessey picked up his first goal of the campaign to round out Fort Frances’ offence.
J.R. Thibert made 37 saves in regulation and stopped all three Laker shootout chances to earn the win.
Shortreed turned aside 27 shots through regulation and then stopped two of three Wolverines in the shootout.
The Lakers return to action Thursday with a home date against the Sioux Lookout Flyers (8-10-1) at 7:30 p.m.
