Joey Payeur
Trying to stop the Fort Frances Lakers these days with all hands on deck is tough enough.
Doing it with a short bench is next to impossible.
Such was the fate of the Dryden Ice Dogs last night, who only were able to ice 14 skaters due to a rash of injuries.
The result was a 6-0 victory for the visiting Lakers to give the SIJHL leaders their 11th-straight win.
A five-goal second period proved far too much for Dryden (8-9) to overcome as Fort Frances (12-1-0-1) extended its lead to seven points over the second-place Thunder Bay North Stars (8-1-0-2), with the Stars holding three games in hand.
“We just kept putting shots on net and attacking them offensively and, eventually, we broke through on their goalie,” noted Lakers’ head coach and general manager Wayne Strachan.
“In the first, we had numerous chances we didn’t capitalize on and even in the second, we were missing the net a lot on good scoring chances,” he added.
“But we managed to get things going and played well in the second period.”
Both teams had no luck with the man advantage last night, with the Lakers going a rare 0-for-4 while Dryden came up empty in six tries.
But that hardly mattered to the high-powered Lakers, with six different players scoring and five players earning two points apiece.
Kevin Kurm’s fifth of the year was the only goal of the first in advance of the floodgates opening in the middle stanza.
Mason Meyer notched his eighth of the campaign at 10:25 before Bryce Lipinski got his seventh at 15:21 to make it 3-0.
Patrick Sofer then broke through for his fourth of the year, and his first in nine games, 46 seconds later—ending the night for Dryden starting goalie Shane Dietl, who allowed four goals on 28 shots.
Robert Kopytek-McKenzie took over between the pipes but got no mercy from the SIJHL’s top scoring club.
Colton Spicer picked up his fifth goal and eighth point in five games since rejoining the Lakers at 18:50 before Torrin Grange concluded the blitz 41 seconds after that with his sixth.
Jordan Cartney took care of the rest, stopping all 29 shots for his first SIJHL shutout.
“Before the game, I heard [Cartney] say he owed them one,” Strachan said about his netminder, who gave up two early goals before getting injured on the Lakers’ last visit to Dryden back on Sept. 25.
“He did just that. He made all the routine stops we needed him to and he made some big cross-crease saves in the third when they were on the power -play,” Strachan added.
“He earned the shutout and it was deserved, for sure.”
Last night also marked the season debut of defenceman Cody Wickstrom, who missed the first part of the season due to a serious illness.
“Cody joined the team [on Oct. 21] and has skated in practice,” noted Strachan.
“He looked good [last night]. [He had]a few mental mistakes, but it is expected having not been in live action and at that tempo for a long period of time,” Strachan reasoned.
“As the game went on, I thought he got stronger, made some smart decisions, and was pretty good on the power play.”
Wickstrom’s return was more important with the absence of blueliner John Dora, who missed last night’s game with an upper-body injury and is listed as day-to-day.
Strachan, meanwhile, confirmed today that forward Tarran Romyn no longer was with the club, having left the Lakers last month.
The Devlin product and former Muskie had one goal and one assist in six games with the Lakers this season.
Fort Frances next heads to Ear Falls on Saturday to take on the English River Miners (4-9-1-0), who are playing their best hockey of the season with three wins in their past four outings.
That includes a 3-2 shootout win at home over the North Stars on Tuesday, which qualifies as the biggest surprise of the early going of the SIJHL season.
The Lakers’ next home game is a week from today (Nov. 7), when the Ice Dogs visit the Ice For Kids Arena at 7:30 p.m.
