Lakers to start playoff run on the road

It was a penalty the Fort Frances Lakers would have liked to have declined.
In Saturday night’s 3-2 loss here to the K&A Wolverines, the Lakers turned a 1-0 lead into a 2-1 deficit with Wolverine Dustin Roy sitting in the box—and helped turn the game in the visitors’ favour.
“It definitely hurts,” bemoaned Lakers’ coach Wayne Strachan. “We were probably carrying the play, but then we made a couple of bad decisions with the puck, the ‘D’ got beat, and those were two [goals] that should have been stopped.
“It should never happen,” he stressed.
The pair of short-handed goals, coupled with Friday night’s 5-4 loss, jammed a stake through the Lakers’ hopes of having home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs.
Fort Frances (14-30-5) entered the weekend trailing the Wolverines (19-27-5) by six points with five games to play, so a couple of wins would have pulled the Lakers to within two points while holding a couple of games in hand.
“We didn’t come out throughout this weekend,” admitted Strachan. “We could have made a huge statement, climbed to within two points, but we didn’t do that.
“It was just sloppy. . . . We have no one to blame but ourselves.”
The Wolverines weren’t exactly dogging it over the weekend since they still had a chance to avoid a first-round series between the fourth- and fifth-place teams.
K&A caught up with third-place Sioux Lookout—and may very well be the third team into the No. 1 through No. 3 first-round tussle with Dryden and Fort William to determine the seedings for the rest of the playoffs.
Strachan felt K&A looked determined to make up ground on the fledgling Flyers, and it showed in their play over the weekend.
“They came hungry and they had their own agenda, and they’re tied for third place now,” he noted.
“They did their job and we didn’t do ours, and what happens is a couple of one-goal losses.”
With the losses, the Lakers are entrenched in fifth place and so will begin the playoffs on the road against either Sioux Lookout or K&A.
Quick starts
The Lakers opened the scoring both nights, with Tyler Stevenson capitalizing just 3:03 into Friday’s game.
K&A bounced back just over a minute later, though, when Patrick Pinder beat Jameson Shortreed.
The visitors then forged ahead quickly in the second, getting goals from Drew Childs and Aaron Ross 3:35 apart to go up 3-1.
The Lakers fought back with a speedy strike of their own, however, as Stevenson and Jordan Carne scored in a 54-second span to knot the game.
Matt Valley and Laker Ryan Presthus then exchanged goals towards the end of the period to send it to the third tied at 4-4.
K&A notched the winner 58 seconds into the third as Aaron Ross’ second of the game did the Lakers in.
Shortreed made 28 saves in a losing cause. K&A starter Eric Swanick made 20 over the first two periods, with Spencer Malone turning aside all 10 shots he saw in relief.
Saturday night’s game also began with promise for the Lakers as Cody Edwards jumped on a Justin Erhart rebound and beat Malone just two minutes in.
But Dustin Roy’s roughing penalty seemed to spark K&A as Nathan Spina took off on a shorthanded break.
Despite being hauled down, he still managed to put the puck past Lakers’ goalie T.J. Pocock at 16:11 of the first.
Then just 51 seconds later, while still shorthanded, Wolverines’ forward Tim Harris broke in and shot a wrister past Pocock to vault K&A into a 2-1 lead.
The Wolverines netted the eventual game-winner early in the second. A pair of Wolverines blazed past the Lakers’ defence to face Shortreed, who had relieved Pocock to start the second.
Chris Smerek fed Ross, who jammed one past Shortreed to put K&A up 3-1.
Fort Frances pressed to cut the lead, though, and nearly did when Tim Hennessey charged out front of the Wolverines’ net, twirled a spin-a-rama, and let loose a wrister that clanged off both posts and out.
The Lakers did solve Malone once more before the period was through when a Stevenson snapper beat the goalie low on the glove side at 14:28.
There was no scoring in the third, but not for Fort Frances’ lack of trying.
With about six minutes to go, Carne was stifled as he tried to bang one past Malone while a Stevenson shot was gloved as the final seconds ticked down.
Shortreed made 16 saves in relief of Pocock, who had made nine in the opening period. Malone turned aside 27 shots.
The Lakers kicked off the final stretch of the regular season last night at home to the Dryden Ice Dogs (the score wasn’t known as of press time).
Fort Frances then will meet those same Ice Dogs tonight in Dryden before closing out the campaign against host Sioux Lookout on Friday night.