Dan Falloon
It’s just been that kind of season for the Fort Frances Lakers.
The local SIJHL squad handed the first-place Fort William North Stars just their second defeat of the season—a 2-1 loss here Friday night—but then went on a 10-day Christmas break, leaving little time to build off the team’s biggest win to date.
Still, while the timing of the gargantuan victory leaves a little to be desired, it was a milestone for the fledgling franchise who enter the holiday layoff with a 7-19-4 mark.
That leaves them nine points behind the fourth-place K&A Wolverines (Thunder Bay), although the Lakers have played five fewer games.
Coach Wayne Strachan made sure to do everything possible to maintain the high over the break.
“We had a good talk after the game, obviously, and they were feeling good about themselves,” Strachan noted. “I just told them to be proud of themselves.
“We handed out a workout schedule for the 10 days they [are] off and just told them, ‘Have a good time on your break, but we need to work hard and carry this momentum that we’ve built in the last couple weeks into the second half, and if we do, it’s going to give us more of an opportunity to improve and come playoff time, you never know what can happen.’”
The Lakers will see plenty of ice before their first game of 2010—a re-match with the North Stars on Jan. 2 there.
“They return on [Dec. 29] and we’ll skate that night,” Strachan remarked.
“We’ll skate the Wednesday morning, and we’ll play the senior team Wednesday night, and we’ll continue to practice all week before we go to Thunder Bay that weekend,” he added.
Strachan knows the North Stars, the 13th-ranked Junior ‘A’ team in the country, will want to avoid another embarrassment in front of their home fans.
“We obviously know that we’ve got them first game back in the second half, and we know it’s not going to be easy to walk into their rink and do the same thing,” he reasoned.
“We’re going to have to come back and work hard, and try to change a couple things in our system just to play a little differently in their rink and, hopefully, we get the same effort and some bounces that go our way.”
The week leading up to Friday night’s win was a bit of a tumultuous one for the Lakers, who built early 2-0 leads in each of the three games they played.
Strachan pointed to the first game—an 8-5 loss to the Wolverines on Dec. 12—as having a moment that set the team’s current responsible play in action.
The Lakers allowed seven goals in the second period of the K&A game and, according to Strachan, they’ve improved their play ever since.
“Between the second and third wasn’t a good conversation in the room, but I just think since then that the guys have realized really what it takes to get the job done,” said Strachan.
“And they know now that if they don’t put in a 60-minute effort, it’s going to be hard to compete every day in this league,” he stressed.
“All in all, it’s been a progress through the last three-and-a-half months. We’ve had some ups and downs, and things haven’t went our way.”
Things did go the Lakers’ way early against the North Stars (28-2-0) when Byron Katapaytuk wired a snapper past Jayme Brattengeier just 4:09 into the game.
Katapaytuk’s fifth of the season came on the power play with Adam Restoule in the “sin bin” for high-sticking.
The Lakers then made it 2-0 just 40 seconds later when Tyler Stevenson took a feed, crashed towards the North Stars’ net, and blazed the puck past Brattengeier.
Fort Frances tried to net a third goal before the period was out.
After the North Stars had been called for the first of two infractions for having too many men on the ice, the Lakers staged an impressive power play—highlighted by Jordan Carne’s open-cage attempt that was denied by Brattengeier.
From there, though, it was the Jameson Shortreed show. The youngest Laker made a number of eye-popping saves on some of the league’s top guns to help preserve the win.
The highlight may have been a play where North Stars’ forward Olivier Morin undressed defender Cody Hasbargen and then Shortreed. But the goalie recovered, reached back with his stick, and kept the Stars off the board.
Shortreed was kept busy as Fort William outshot the Lakers 10-7 in the first, then piled on for an almost-unfair 20-4 margin in the second and 18-8 in the third.
But it wasn’t until late in the final frame that Fort William solved the Emo-born netminder.
Just nine seconds into a slashing minor against Mike Jourdain, North Stars’ assistant captain and Devlin native Jordan Davis barrelled his way towards the Laker net, where the puck hit a skate and skipped up just enough over the leg of Shortreed.
“I was just praying that they wouldn’t get a lucky goal,” said Shortreed. “[When it happened], I just thought that we were up 2-1 and they still needed one more.
“I just thought about what I needed to do to pick up my game again.
“I’ll just do my job, the boys did theirs,” he added.
The North Stars had life but the home squad withstood the frantic Fort William pressure for just long enough to help Shortreed earn his fifth win of the season.
Shortreed has responded well since getting pulled against K&A—allowing just three goals in regulation time in his last two games.
“I worked on my rebound control and getting out of my paint to cut down the angle,” he noted.
Strachan has been impressed with his goalie throughout the season, and knew Friday night’s game was simply the byproduct of his development.
“He’s a young goalie who’s just been thrown into the fire and has played so well,” Strachan remarked.
The victory snapped a five-game losing streak for the Lakers while the North Stars had their 22-game winning streak came to an end.
Colton Kennedy, Fort Frances’ leading scorer, assisted on both goals to run his point total to 45—good for third in the SIJHL—and also helped Kennedy extend his point streak to four games.
Stevenson also is on a four-game point streak while Katapaytuk has notched at least a point in five-straight.
“With Byron, he’s a player that has a lot of talent, a lot of smarts for the game, and his development’s been slowed a bit by injuries,” Strachan said. “But when he’s been in the lineup, he’s definitely a big, powerful player and he’s capable of putting numbers up offensively.
“That’s what we need to get out of him because we need some secondary scoring,” he stressed.
Katapaytuk has played in 21 of the 30 games, putting up five goals and nine assists for 14 points, leaving him third in team scoring.
The Lakers’ first home game after the Christmas layoff is Jan. 14 against K&A.
