Road beckons Thunder in coming weeks

Home ice has been fairly nice, but now it’s time to see what the defending SIJHL champions can do on the road.
“It will be good to get away,” said Borderland Thunder head coach Dave Allison, whose squad will pack their suitcases for the first time this season as they travel to Thunder Bay to take on the K&A Variety Golden Hawks this Friday and Saturday.
The Thunder had opened the campaign by winning three of five at home, including 9-0 and 9-5 wins over the Golden Hawks here this past weekend.
“It give the guys a chance to play cards on the bus, and do things that will bring them together as a team,” Allison noted. “We’re going to go see the Terry Fox memorial, and do some, let’s say, cultural things during our off time.
“We just want to have some fun as a team.”
The Thunder—currently in third place in the SIJHL—will play five of their next six games away from the Ice for Kids Arena, but forward Nate Weossner said the itinerary provides a perfect opportunity to fine-tune the squad’s play behind their own blueline.
“We need to clean up our defensive play,” said the first-year Thunder player from Bemidji, Mn. “Our defence propels our offence. It would be great to get a couple of road wins under our belt.”
The Hawks (1-6-2-0) flew into Fort Frances last weekend looking to build off of their first victory of the year on Thursday night against the Thunder Bay KC Bulldogs in the head coaching debut of Rick Baraniuk, who took over after Brian Vescio had stepped down last week.
But a five-goal outburst by the Thunder in the third period on both Friday and Saturday night punctuated their victories.
A pair of first-year Thunder players teamed up to break the ice at 10:09 of the first period Friday as Dave Gooch and Andrew Dault executed a two-on-one to perfection, with Dault tapping home his first of the year to make it 1-0.
Kurt Hogard then collected his first of the year 1:14 later, sending a floater from the right point to the top corner past starting goalie Carter Hutton.
The second period saw the Thunder begin to take over the game, and their lead grew to 3-0 at 10:02 when Josh McAndrew hit Kevin Webb in full flight on the left wing with a beautiful long-distance feed.
Webb decoyed on a two-on-one and blistered a shot past Hutton to the far side, causing Baraniuk to pull his netminder for another first-year junior player, Darren Peace.
But the Hawks’ net was anything but peaceful on this night as Gooch’s howitzer from the blueline at 18:26 of the frame pushed the advantage to 4-0—and giving the Mantua, N.J. native his first goal with the Thunder.
Calgary product Aaron Boyer was the third-period pace-setter for Borderland, scoring twice in the final session to salt away the win.
Boyer batted in a loose puck from a scramble at 3:45 to make it 5-0.
Then after Jordan Murray (first of the year) and Webb (second) tallied 1:32 apart midway through the period, Boyer finished off a brilliant rush at 14:46 when he flipped the puck in while falling down past Hutton, who came back in for Peace after Murray’s marker.
Dan Hoehne stopped all 35 shots the Hawks sent his way to get his first win and first shutout of the season while Weossner completed the assault at 17:01 on another two-on-one rush.
Weossner’s best was yet to come, though, as he peppered the Hawks for four goals Saturday. He and linemates McAndrew and Ian Lockman collected 13 points altogether to ruin the homecoming of former Thunder goalie Ryan Crane.
Crane, who had started the Thunder’s first two games this season and posting a 1-1 with a 2.00 goals-against average before being released, was under fire all night as the Thunder hammered 54 shots at him to go along with the 43 they unleashed the previous evening.
But unlike the previous night, which was highlighted by finesse goals, the Thunder brought their lunch boxes Saturday—with workmanlike efforts creating numerous offensive chances.
Weossner started pasting together his big evening early, roofing a McAndrew pass behind Crane at 7:34 of the first. The lead was doubled at 11:57 when McAndrew deftly tipped an Andrew Perrault point shot past Crane just before dropping his stick to earn his first goal of the year.
At 4:04 of the second, Rob Scales fought for position at the side of the net, hanging in long enough to whack in a rebound off a Webb shot for his first of the campaign and a 3-0 lead.
McAndrew zipped a shot to the top corner that sent Crane’s water bottle flying for his second of the contest at 6:28—extending the Thunder lead to four.
Jared Baldwin, the International Falls Broncos graduate who was starting his first SIJHL contest, finally gave the Hawks an opening at 12:11 of the middle frame.
He was unable to keep a Tim Wabanonik shot from trickling through his pads, and Hawks scoring leader Vince Kurzewski zoomed in to tuck home his league-leading eighth goal of the season.
The Hawks showed they weren’t going to roll over in a wild nine-goal third period as Sean Trevisanutto scored his first of two in the last 20 minutes at the 27-second mark to cut the Thunder lead to 4-2.
But Weossner surpassed Trevisanutto’s third-period achievements, netting a hat trick in the final stanza to spark Borderland to the win.
He scored on either side of Trevisanutto’s second goal to make it 6-3, then added the Thunder’s final tally of the game for the second-straight evening at 17:18 to give him a team-high five goals for the season.
Ryan Murray (first of the year) and Dennis Morrison (third) had the other Thunder goals in the period while Brent Irwin (second) and Kevin MacDonald (first) capped the Hawks’ scoring.
Former Thunder forward Jared Catholique-Bruyere of Fort Frances, who dropped the gloves to help his team’s cause in his only appearance with Borderland earlier this year, was in a fighting mood again as he joined Crane in returning to face his old teammates Saturday night.
Catholique-Bruyere drew the ire of Thunder defenceman Clayton Windigo in the second, with Windigo getting a roughing penalty, before the two hooked up for a spirited scrap at 6:46 of the third.
Boyer left Saturday’s game as a precautionary measure after hurting his ankle, although Allison didn’t believe it was serious enough to keep him out of the line-up this weekend.
The Thunder’s next home game is this Tuesday (Oct. 21) at 7:30 p.m. against the Dryden Ice Dogs.