Joey Payeur
Most coaches would give their whistle for a 12-game winning streak but Wayne Strachan isn’t blowing sunshine in his team’s general direction at this point.
The Fort Frances Lakers’ head coach and general manager watched his team give an uneven performance in a 5-4 victory over the Minnesota Iron Rangers here Saturday night.
“I may be a tough judge but to me, we’re just getting by right now,” Strachan said of the first-place Lakers (29-7-0-1), who swept the home-and-home series with the third-place Rangers (19-14-5) after winning 2-1 in a seven-round shootout last Wednesday in Hoyt Lakes.
“We’re finding ways to win but I don’t think we’re playing to our full potential,” he remarked.
“We’ve talked about keeping ourselves motivated and making ourselves a better team,” Strachan noted.
“But when we hit 10 in a row, we got to the point where everybody’s writing about the winning streak, and we’ve had a couple of guys get picked player-of-the-week, and we’ve forgotten why we won those first 10.
“We’ve got to get back to having a mentality of hard work,” he stressed.
Dylan Robertson broke a 3-3 tie at 1:03 of the third when he took a feed from Donovan Cousineau, who did nice work to circle the boards and hold onto the puck, and drilled his second of the game past former Lakers’ goalie Devin Tappenden.
Nick Minerva tacked on what would be an important insurance goal on the power play at 15:16.
Noah Anderson pulled Minnesota within one with his second of the game with seven seconds left and Tappenden on the bench.
But the Rangers could do nothing to generate another scoring chance with the little time they had left.
Cousineau, who replaced Bryson Jasper (family commitments) on a line with Mason Meyer and Lucas DeBenedet for the second-straight game, and Nolan Ross also scored for the Lakers.
Gus Karkinen and Evan Erickson, in his first game back from an extended injury layoff, had the other Minnesota markers.
Pierce Dushenko came up with 24 saves to improve his record to 6-1 since joining the Lakers in December.
Tappenden, starting for the first time against his former team, notched 39 saves.
He also made it clear he would like another crack at the team that traded him at the deadline two weeks ago with much bigger stakes on the line—like in the SIJHL final.
“I want nothing else,” said the Markham, Ont. native, who went 11-5 with a 3.50 GAA and .895 save percentage with the Lakers this season.
“I mean it.”
The Lakers will play their next three games in the Iron Rangers’ home arena, but against three different teams.
As part of the annual “SIJHL Showcase,” Fort Frances will play the English River Miners (9-27-4) this Wednesday, then the Thunder Bay North Stars on Thursday.
Then they’ll face Minnesota there Feb. 3.
The Lakers won’t play in front of their home crowd again until Feb. 10, when they’ll host the Dryden GM Ice Dogs at “The Duke” (Couchiching Arena).
