Lucas Punkari
In a game that both sides called their biggest of the season up to this point, the Fort Frances Lakers made a huge statement towards trying to lock up the second overall seed for the SIJHL playoffs last night and defeated the Thunder Bay North Stars by a score of 3-2 at the Ice for Kids Arena here.
Lakers forward Jaret LeClair scored the game winner at the 4:38 mark of the third period, after receiving a slick feed from Jace Baldwin in front of the net, while at the other end of the ice, goaltender Tyler Ampe stymied the North Stars offence during the final minutes to help give his team the victory.
“It was definitely the type of game that had a playoff atmosphere to it,” Lakers head coach and general manager Wayne Strachan said.
“They (Thunder Bay) are a team that play an in your face playoff style game every night, their coach is intense, and he motivates the guys to be up for every game,” Strachan explained.
“Tonight, I thought that we controlled the tempo in the first period, which was what our game plan was, and I thought we played much better all around than we did in the loss to Dryden on Wednesday,” Strachan added.
Lakers captain Tyler Stevenson, who picked up the SIJHL’s most sportsmanlike player award for the 2010/11 season earlier in the day, continued his recent goal scoring streak on Thursday as he potted a pair of goals to pace the Lakers on offense.
“This was a huge make or break game for us,” Stevenson, who again leads the league with 38 markers this season, said.
“When the game was tied after the second, we knew that the third was going to be our biggest period of the year, and we were able to find a way to win,” he reasoned.
“We gave ourselves a bit of breathing room now in the standings, and we now control our own destiny which is big for us,” added Stevenson.
North Stars captain Mitch Forbes led the way for his squad on offence, as he had a goal and an assist in the loss, with Justin Slobozian scoring the team’s other marker.
“I’m not happy at all, we just didn’t show up to play,” North Stars head coach Todd Howarth said.
“We’re in a battle for second place in the standings here, and we can’t have ten guys show up to play and have another ten guys just take the night off. Fort Frances deserved to win tonight and we didn’t,” he added.
By picking up the two points in the tightly contested affair yesterday, the Lakers now move five points ahead of the North Stars for the second seed in the SIJHL post-season, as they now get ready to face the league’s regular season champion Wisconsin Wilderness here tomorrow evening at 7:30 p.m.
“We just want to send a message to them that we’ll be tough to face come playoff time,” Stevenson said.
“They’ve been on a bit of a run here lately, but we want to show them that this is our league and that we’re the better team,” he stressed.
