No charges yet from brawl

There’s no word yet whether the Fort Frances OPP will lay any charges in the aftermath of last Tuesday night’s brawl here between the Borderland Thunder and Dryden Ice Dogs.
Police were called to the Ice for Kids Arena when fights broke out after the final whistle among the players and both coaching staffs.
The father of one of the Ice Dogs players also was punched during the melee.
But the SIJHL did act quickly, suspending Thunder head coach Dave Allison for the rest of the regular season (six games) on Wednesday and also handing assistant coach Greg Madill a three-game sentence.
Dryden head coach Larry Wintoneak also will miss the rest of the regular season (seven games) for his role in the brawl while Ice Dogs trainer Kevin McCallum was given a three-game suspension.
The SIJHL also ended up suspending two Thunder players (Andrew Dault and Tyler Barker) and two Ice Dogs (Blaire Oversby and Sean Bassingthwaite) one game each for drawing their third fighting major of the game.
“More could have been done, but I took into consideration that the playoffs are coming up and I don’t want to hurt their hockey teams,” SIJHL commissioner Harvey Fedell said last week.
“If it happened at the beginning of the season, more and harsher suspensions would’ve resulted,” he admitted.
There was a strong police presence in Dryden the following night when these same two teams squared off again. But that game was played without incident.
“I think it was poor judgment by some people and it just escalated,” newly-appointed Thunder captain Kurt Hogard said of the brawl. “It could’ve been a little scrum, but all of sudden fuses were blown and a huge melee was born.
“But everyone got it out of their system, and no one is scared if it happens again,” he added.
Hogard recounted his version of what happened.
“The game was over and a stick flew over to our bench and it just missed hitting Derek Fisher, and just missed me, and I didn’t know what to think,” he recalled. “And then Dave [Allison], our team leader, went out there.
“You don’t take that,” Hogard stressed. “If someone harpoons a stick at you, you’re just not going to let them get away with it, and we’ve got to send a message to these guys for the playoffs.”