Lucas Punkari
Now is when the post-season really begins for the Fort Frances Lakers.
After losing a two-game, total-goal series to the Wisconsin Wilderness, the Lakers now are preparing for their SIJHL semi-final series with the Dryden Ice Dogs, which is set to kick off this Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Ice For Kids Arena here.
“If you take a look at Dryden, they’ve [had] our number all year,” Lakers’ head coach and general manager Wayne Strachan noted.
“We’ll need to get over a couple of mental blocks that we do have against that team,” he admitted.
“But if we can just come out and play our game, we should be in good shape.”
Even though the Ice Dogs won the season series by an 8-4 margin, the Lakers do feel confident heading into the semi-finals, especially after taking the regular-season champion Wilderness to a series-deciding shootout in the opening round.
“Playing four games at that level of play is big for us,” Lakers’ captain Tyler Stevenson said.
“There’s that hunger in the room now that we can beat anybody, and we’ll be able to do that if we play exactly to our game plan next week,” he reasoned.
That newfound confidence stemmed from a resounding 6-2 win over the Wilderness last Friday night at the Ice For Kids Arena—just 24 hours after Wisconsin knocked off the home squad by a 4-3 score.
“The biggest thing for us is that we played a whole 60 minutes,” Stevenson stressed.
“In the last couple of games, we played 40 strong minutes and then we would let up for 20 minutes.
“We kept the pedal down the whole time in this one, and that was the key for us,” he added.
The victory gave the Lakers the second leg of the two-game, total-goal series by a 9-6 score, which forced a shootout to determine the series winner given the Wilderness had won the first leg of the series in Spooner, Wis. the previous weekend.
After allowing six goals in regulation time, Wilderness netminder Jake Hebda came up big when it mattered the most—making a couple of big pad saves and then a huge snagging glove stop on Blake Boaz to preserve a 2-1 shootout triumph and the series win for the visitors.
“That was just the weirdest thing,” Hebda remarked. “That was the first time in a while that we struggled like that, and personally I can’t remember last time I let in three goals let alone six.
“The key was just making sure that I was able to get rid of all of the bad emotions inside of me because I knew the shootout was coming,” he added.
“So in the third, I was joking around and getting light because I knew we could still win the series.”
SIJHL rookie-of-the-year Austin Adduono and Wilderness captain Keith Tessin both solved Lakers’ goalie Tyler Ampe in the shootout to help give their team the chance to choose their semi-final opponent, which ended up being the fourth-seeded Thunder Bay North Stars.
That left the Lakers to face the third-seeded Ice Dogs.
“It was a rough game for us, in general, and we haven’t played that badly in about five or six months,” said Wilderness head coach and GM Rod Aldoff.
“We just weren’t ourselves, and who knows why it was,” he added.
“But when it came down to a shootout, we got the job done and now all we can do is just put this series behind us and move
forward.”
Having gone with Ampe in their 4-3 loss to Wisconsin last Thursday, Strachan went back with the Hermantown, Mn. native once again in Friday night’s tilt—and it proved to be the right decision as the Lakers’ netminder made 34 saves en route to being named the game’s first star.
“We were debating about who to go with in net [between Ampe and Jameson Shortreed], but Ampe’s been a big part of our puzzle all year so we decided to go with him again,” Strachan explained.
“He made a number of big saves throughout the game when we needed him to, and he was in there all the time for us, so I thought he performed very well,” he lauded.
Offensively, the Lakers were firing on all cylinders Friday as Boaz, Stevenson, Byron Katapaytuk, Dan Smith, Henry Gutierrez, and Jon Sinclair lit the lamp.
“Before the game, we were talking in the office about how tough it was going to be to beat them by two goals,” recalled Strachan, noting the situation his team was facing heading into Friday’s match-up.
“The guys were hungry around the net, and they were capitalizing on their opportunities, which is something we haven’t been doing the last few weeks so that was good to see,” Strachan added.
Out of the six goals the Lakers scored, Sinclair’s third-period marker was the one everyone was talking about in the stands.
The forward jumped around a Wilderness defender while rushing up the ice before diving at a loose puck that slowly trickled past Hebda.
“If we sent the tape of that goal to TSN, I’m pretty sure it would end up being the ‘Highlight of the Night,’” Strachan said.
“It was probably one of the prettiest goals I’ve seen all year. And while he may of have a little bit of luck on his side, that was a great job by him to score that one.”
Another major talking point among the Lakers’ players was a fight in the dying stages of the second stanza, when Jaret LeClair landed a one-punch knockout in a tussle with Wilderness defenceman Nathan Paulsen.
“They were taking a few liberties on him [LeClair] and I think he had enough,” Stevenson said.
“He’s come a long way in his fights this year, and that gave not only our bench but the entire crowd a huge lift that we carried over until the third period,” Stevenson added.
With the first-round series with the Wilderness now history, the Lakers now are focused on their semi-final showdown with Dryden—a team that presents a number of different challenges.
“It’s going to be a tough series,” Strachan warned. “Obviously, we’re going to keep a close eye on [Ice Dogs’ captain and SIJHL MVP] John Mitchell.
“Their two lines are both putting up some numbers and their power play was really clicking against Duluth,” he noted.
“The key I think, though, will be to try and get to their goaltender [Ian Perrier],” Strachan stressed.
“He’s been one of the top guys in our league this year, and we’re going to have get some pucks by him.”
