Joey Payeur
The bus ride home could have seemed like an eternity.
Instead, the long and winding road back from Spooner, Wis. gave the Fort Frances Lakers a better opportunity to revel in what was their biggest win of the season to date.
Jace Baldwin scored the shootout winner, and Tyler Ampe made the clinching save, to give the Lakers a 5-4 victory in a shootout over the host Wisconsin Wilderness in SIJHL action on Sunday.
Fort Frances may have gone .500 on their four-game road swing, but they felt like a million bucks after ending Wisconsin’s nine-game winning streak at home—and overall—in dramatic fashion.
With the win, the Lakers (27-13-3) also moved to within five points of the Wilderness (29-6-4) in the race for first place in the SIJHL standings and have a 4-2 lead in the season series.
Having lost two of three entering Sunday’s contest following a six-game winning stretch of its own, Fort Frances wanted to come out flying.
Instead, it was the hosts soaring early, with Austin Adduono beating Ampe at 3:17 of the first period.
But Baldwin made sure that situation didn’t last too long, netting the equalizer at 15:15 for his 16th of the season, before Paine put the Wilderness back in front on the power play at 17:20.
Lucas Hendrickson compounded the Lakers’ difficulties at 9:20 with his man-advantage goal to make it 3-1 before the Lakers came alive.
Only 22 seconds after Hendrickson’s tally, Zach McCool fired in his fourth of the year. Then just 1:15 after that, Dane Morin notched his first goal since joining Fort Frances seven games ago to tie the contest.
Dan Smith gave the Lakers their first lead of the game at 6:21 of the third with his ninth goal in 15 games with Fort Frances.
But Tessin improved the Wilderness’ power-play efficiency for the day to a gaudy 3-for-8 (the Lakers were 0-for-7) with his extra-strength goal with 3:06 left in regulation to force overtime.
When the 4-on-4 settled nothing, the shootout started with Wisconsin goalie John McLean stopping Byron Katapaytuk while Adduono made good on his chance to put the Wilderness in the driver’s seat.
The Lakers wouldn’t throw in the towel, though, as team leading scorer Tyler Stevenson knotted the shootout, with Ampe then denying Tessin.
Matt Caulfield for the Lakers and Paine for Wisconsin both came up empty to force sudden death in the shootout.
Baldwin beat McLean to give Fort Frances a 2-1 lead and Ampe made sure that held up when he rejected Wilson Housley’s chance.
In one of his keynote performances this season, Ampe made 47 saves through regulation and overtime to improve to 18-9-1.
McLean did well in a losing cause with 40 saves, but dropped to 19-4-1-2.
Bucked off
The Lakers were in a far less festive mood the previous night, when the cellar-dwelling Duluth Clydesdales (10-30-2) gave their home crowd something to finally celebrate by ending a six-game losing streak with a 2-1 upset victory over Fort Frances.
Duluth should have been ripe for the picking after getting waxed 8-1 on Friday night by Wisconsin.
But the Clydesdales wound up engaging the Lakers in an indoor pond hockey game in the first period, with Fort Frances outshooting Duluth 23-19, as Ampe and counterpart Jeff Dunaisky survived the avalanche of frozen rubber unscathed.
That led to a second period on the opposite end of the excitement level, with both teams only registering one shot on goal in the frame.
That was all the Clydesdales needed, however, as Aaron Dusek beat Ampe at 6:52 to give Duluth the edge.
Matt Jerulle, who set up Dusek’s marker, then doubled the lead at 15:32 of the third period.
Jaret Leclair’s 13th of the season at 19:16, with Ampe on the bench for an extra attacker, gave Fort Frances hope.
But Dunaisky stood tall in the waning seconds to put his squad over the top, finishing with 28 saves while Ampe posted 31 in a losing cause.
Fort Frances had opened their four-game road trip last Tuesday (Jan. 18) in Dryden with an 8-2 loss to the Ice Dogs.
After Stevenson made it 1-0 with a power-play goal at 2:01 of the first, Dryden struck for five-straight goals, then another three in a row to end the game after the Fort’s only other response (also by Stevenson).
Dwight Lee had a hat trick to pace the Ice Dogs, with Ampe (nine saves on 14 shots) getting yanked after Dryden made it 5-1 just 2:11 into the second.
Jameson Shortreed mopped up with 14 stops of his own.
Tom Kuhn, Henry Vadnais, Ryan Lobreau, Jesse Linner, and Jon Mitchell had Dryden’s other goals, with Ian Perrier making 24 saves between the pipes.
But the Lakers rebounded in the second game of the road trip, doing just enough to earn a 3-1 victory over the fifth-place Sioux Lookout Flyers (9-26-5) last Thursday.
Jon Sinclair’s shorthanded shot beat Sioux Lookout goalie Jesse Wilkins at 7:43 of the first for the only goal of the opening frame.
Blake Boaz notched his seventh goal of the campaign at 9:51 of the second before Darnell Ferland put the Flyers on the board at 15:44.
On a night when both teams struggled on the power play (Fort Frances went 0-for-6 while Sioux Lookout was 0-for-7), and three fights broke out within a minute of each other in the third period, Leclair threw the knockout blow with an empty-netter with 25 seconds to go.
Shortreed turned aside 26 shots to improve to 8-4-2 this season for the Lakers while Wilkins had 22 stops to fall to 7-17-3-1.
The Lakers were back on home ice last night against those same Flyers (the outcome was unknown as of press time).
Fort Frances then will warm up the bus and head south again for three games in three nights this weekend, including back-to-back battles with Wisconsin on Friday and Saturday before a Sunday meeting with Duluth.
The next Lakers’ home game is slated for Thursday, Feb. 3 against the Wilderness.
