Staff
There’s no place like home.
Backed by a 24-save effort by Ryan Faragher and four points from a red-hot Kyle Turgeon, the Fort Frances Jr. Sabres continued their home-ice dominance with a 5-0 shutout over the Schreiber Diesels last night.
The Sabres (21-11-2) improved to 10-4 at the Ice for Kids Arena this season, and pulled a full seven points ahead of the Diesels (17-14-3) in the battle for third place in the SIJHL.
Mitch Cain opened the scoring midway through the first period, which held up until midway through the second when Turgeon spotted Dan Usiski camped out to the side of Josh Baker’s net and he made no mistake—tallying just as a penalty to the Diesels’ Ryan Pearson had expired.
The Sabres extended their lead just over a minute later. Captain Chris Sinclair drove deep into the Diesels’ zone and then fed a perfect pass back to Brendan Baumgartner in the slot for a 3-0 lead.
Faragher came up huge shortly afterwards, stopping Colin Wise point-blank with a glove save to preserve the three-goal cushion after 40 minutes.
The home side carried that momentum into the third, getting a pair of goals from Turgeon to ice the victory.
The Fort Frances native now has at least a point in 11-straight games (six goals and 13 assists).
Turgeon’s first goal came off some hard work in the slot by Usiski. The Rainy River product drove the net and took two defenders with him, allowing Turgeon to snap home a loose puck from in close.
Turgeon rounded out the scoring on a pretty give-and-go play with Baumgartner in the dying seconds.
Emotions boiled over in the third as first Rod Bouchard and Kyle Lapenskie got involved in a goalmouth scrum. Then later, Phillippe Gauvin took exception to a hit by Mario Boivin on the Diesels’ leading scorer, Jared Saunders, leading to a short-lived bout between the two that turned into more of a wrestling match.
The Sabres have dominated the season series between the two teams, winning all seven meetings, and plenty of bad blood likely will carry over to tonight’s showdown when the two teams resume pleasantries at the Ice for Kids Arena starting at 7:30 p.m.
The Sabres then head to Dryden for a meeting with the Ice Dogs on Sunday afternoon.
