Lucas Punkari
The Fort Frances Lakers are heading into the second leg of their two-game, total-goal series with the Wisconsin Wilderness in a bit of a hole after losing the first leg by a combined score of 6-3 last weekend in Spooner.
After taking the opening game 3-2 on Friday night, the Lakers fell 4-0 on Saturday.
But Lakers’ head coach and general manager Wayne Strachan vowed those games will be long gone from the team’s memory bank when they take to the ice here tomorrow night.
“You just have to forget about them,” Strachan stressed.
“If this was a seven-game series, we’d be coming back in a good situation after winning the first game,” he reasoned.
“But as it turns out with this format, we ended up coming back on the losing end of things.
“I don’t think it’s something you have to dwell over for too long,” Strachan reiterated.
“We’re just working on improving some of the things that we need to work on going into the two games on home ice.”
A short-handed goal by Henry Gutierrez in the third period Friday night was the difference as the second-seeded Lakers kicked off their post-season run by edging the regular-season champion Wilderness.
“We got a favourable bounce there on the penalty kill and that allowed Henry to spring loose on a breakaway, which he scored a very pretty goal on,” Strachan recalled.
“I don’t know if we had a little bit of jitters or if we didn’t know quite what to expect, but we came out a little bit flat in the first period as result,” he admitted.
“[But] after we talked to the guys in the intermission about what we needed to do, the guys came out a lot harder and it was a back-and-forth game the rest of the way.”
Lakers’ goalie Tyler Ampe was another key contributor to Friday night’s victory as the Hermantown, Mn. native turned aside 46 shots to earn the game’s first star.
“Tyler was on his game in the first period,” Strachan noted. “And if it wasn’t for him, we could have been down by four or five goals.
“In the third period, they [Wisconsin] had a lot of chances on the power play but Tyler rose to the occasion between the pipes for us and played up to his abilities,” Strachan added.
Jameson Shortreed got the start in goal for the Lakers in Game 2 on Saturday night, but his outing lasted only 20 minutes after giving up goals by Nathan Paulsen and Keith Tessin to give the host Wilderness a 2-0 lead.
“We analyzed the bench after the period and after the second goal, in particular, you could just see the emotion of the entire bench just drop,” Strachan explained.
“We felt that in making a change, it could also lift us up a little bit on the bench, and to see if we could get a little bit of a change in the momentum,” he added.
Instead, the Wilderness beat Ampe twice in the second frame. At the other end of the rink, meanwhile, Jake Hebda shut down the Lakers’ offensive attack—making 34 saves to earn the shutout.
“We came out flat once again as we did on Friday night,” Strachan noted.
“We had about four breakaways during the game, but Hebda was solid in the net for them,” he said.
“But we also took too many undisciplined penalties, which really hurt us,.”
With the scoreboard from the previous two games now erased, and the friendly confines of the Ice For Kids Arena on their side, the Lakers will be looking to improve on a few things in the second leg of their opening-round series, which goes Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m.
Should the Lakers take the series here, a shootout will decide the overall winner, who then will get to choose their semi-final opponent.
“The power play is the main thing that we’ve been working as it was a little lackluster during the weekend,” Strachan remarked.
“We’re prepared to face them again, and if we fare well on Thursday night, that will give us a chance to possibly win the series and we’ll see what happens after that,” he added.
In other SIJHL playoff action, the third-seeded Dryden Ice Dogs swept the sixth-seeded Duluth Clydesdales in their best-of-seven quarter-final series, winning Game 4 by a 7-1 score Monday night down in Two Harbors.
The other quarter-final series resumes tonight as the fifth-seeded Sioux Lookout Flyers host the fourth-seeded Thunder Bay North Stars in Game 3.
The defending champion North Stars lead that best-of-seven showdown 2-0.
