Joey Payeur
It was a beautiful end to a mostly ugly story.
Wyatt Cota scored the game-winner on the power play at 2:51 of overtime to give the Fort Frances Lakers a 6-5 victory over the visiting English River Miners on Tuesday night.
With Landen Matechuk in the box for goaltender interference to set up a 4-on-3 advantage, Mason Meyer took a pass from Lucas DeBenedet and drew the attention of all three Miners’ defenders.
Meyer then zipped a cross-ice pass to Cota, left unguarded at the open side of the net, who calmly tapped the puck into the cage for his second goal of the game.
It was the ninth-straight win for the Lakers (26-7-0-1), who prevailed despite missing captain Miles Nolan (illness) and fellow forward Colton Spicer (leg) from the lineup.
“I think in the first we carried the play . . . but in the second we were nowhere near our potential,” said Lakers’ head coach and general manager Wayne Strachan.
“In the third, we had a couple of tough ones go in our net,” he added.
“English River kept working hard and didn’t quit.”
One of those tough ones was Taylor Bargar’s hat-trick goal with 20.1 seconds left in regulation time.
With Miners’ goalie Greg Harney pulled for an extra attacker, Bargar waited two steps over centre ice for his teammates to get back onside and then launched an off-speed shot from 90 feet away that fooled Lakers’ goalie Pierce Dushenko.
It was the fourth Lakers’ lead erased by the Miners, who traded away two of their top three scorers ahead of Saturday’s trade deadline but didn’t look offensively challenged at all.
DeBenedet extended his points streak to nine games with a terrific short-handed goal on a backhand deke that finished off a 2-on-1 with Meyer for the only goal of the first period.
The Miners (6-26-4) came out seeking retribution in the second and got it on goals by Aaron Beauchamp and Dominic Blouin (power play).
Then it was the home squad’s turn, with Fort Frances forward Nolan Ross making a triumphant return to his old stomping grounds.
Ross, playing in his Lakers’ debut after being picked up from the Portage Terriers (MJHL) on Saturday, uncorked a shot off the post and in from the slot for the equalizer.
“It’s been a long time since I played at home, probably five years,” smiled Ross, who also isn’t playing on the same team as his twin brother, Davis, for the first time in his hockey life.
“I was really nervous to start the game and I’m still trying to get into game shape,” he admitted.
Cota then stole a page out of “The Mighty Ducks” playbook by shooting what looked like a “knuckle puck” from the point during a power play late in the frame that eluded Harney to put the Lakers up 3-2.
Richard Dartnall tied it early in the third before Bryson Jasper made a great steal of the puck just outside the Miners’ blueline and eventually found Bowen Alcock steaming up the middle, who blasted a shot high to the glove side to make it 4-3.
Bargar responded a few minutes later when he ripped home a loose puck from in front that had come off the end boards and slipped past the stick of Matt Vela.
But Vela later made up for it after Carter Chorney made a spectacular move to split two defencemen and then send the puck over to Vela, who slid it into the mostly empty net.
Dushenko made 24 saves to earn the while Harney stopped 39 pucks.
Defenceman Cody Antonini also played his first game as a Laker on Tuesday night.
The Lakers will shoot for 10-straight wins tomorrow night when they host the Thunder Bay North Stars (20-13-4).
The team’s third new acquisition, defenceman Roshen Jaswal, is expected to make his Lakers’ debut then.
