Mitch Calvert
The Fort Frances Jr. Sabres have won five-straight games after sweeping the host Schreiber Diesels on Friday and Saturday.
The Sabres (17-8-1) opened the road series Friday night with a 3-0 shutout—backstopped by a 36-save effort from Ryan Faragher in goal.
Mitch Cain and Brendan Baumgartner netted power-play markers in the first period, with captain Chris Sinclair adding an insurance marker in the second.
Saturday night’s game started out much the same way, with the Sabres again getting a pair of first-period markers—this time from Cain and Dan Usiski.
But unlike Friday, the Diesels (16-9-2) didn’t roll over and die this time. After a scoreless second, Schreiber scored three unanswered goals in the third to grab a 3-2 lead with under five minutes to play.
The Sabres struck back, however, getting a late power-play goal from Usiski with just over two minutes left to send the game to overtime.
The extra period solved nothing, so the teams went to a shootout, where Gabe Capozzi became the hero with the only goal as the fifth shooter in the 5-4 win.
“Wayne [Strachan] tapped me on the back and told me to go, and I was so nervous,” Capozzi said of getting his name called in the shootout.
“I just went down and faked like I was going to go backhand on the keeper [Josh Baker], and he fell for it, and then I just slipped it home forehand and was just ecstatic,” he added.
Faragher, meanwhile, stopped all five Schreiber shooters—on top of 45 of 48 shots in regulation and overtime.
The Sabres now are a perfect 5-0 against the Diesels this season, and sit a point ahead of their rivals for third place in the SIJHL—one point back of the Thunder Bay Bearcats with a game in hand.
“Well, this weekend it was the Ryan Faragher show, he played unreal,” Capozzi admitted.
“We just seem to come out and play our systems, and hit them hard, and they don’t seem to like that,” he added of the Sabres’ dominance over the Diesels so far this season.
The Sabres scored three power-play goals during the two-game series while holding the Diesels scoreless with the man advantage.
“As I have said before, we have been working on our power play and it came through both nights,” Strachan enthused.
“We have had success lately [on the penalty kill] because we have been pressuring hard and outworking the opposition’s power play,” he noted. “I believe we are around 90 percent on our ‘PK’, which is good for this time of year.
“As the [season] goes on and teams improve, we will have to become better in both these situations as we get closer to the playoffs as this is one of the keys to winning,” Strachan stressed.
Rainy River’s Usiski was a big key to Saturday night’s win, and Strachan hopes to see more of the same from the 18-year-old forward the rest of the way.
“Usiski is a player we need to step up right now,” he remarked. “He has kind of been in the doghouse lately, but he was given a chance to step up in playing with Cain and [Kyle] Turgeon on Saturday, and he rose to the occasion.
“He was one of our best players on the ice and contributed to the victory,” Strachan added. “He is a player with talent and the ability to score, [but] he has to learn that he needs to take care of himself, and work hard all the time, to achieve success in this league.”
The Sabres have a chance to extend their winning streak to seven games heading into the prolonged Christmas break when they face the Dryden Ice Dogs tonight up there and again Saturday night here before the break (they don’t resume play until Jan. 9 at Fort William against the first-place North Stars).
“We have a goal set before Christmas and they are in our way of making it,” Strachan said of Dryden. “This should be all the motivation our players need to get up for the games.
“We need to stay positive, and especially [tonight], we need some players to step up as we will not have the services of Mitch Cain [prospect game in P.E.I.] and most likely Colton Kennedy [lower body injury], due to a dirty play by one of the Diesel players on Friday.”
The recent success on the ice hasn’t forced Strachan to make any hair-trigger moves to improve his club, but the final trade deadline looms Jan. 10 and the team has player cards available to add pieces before then.
“We feel that we have a good team here right now,” Strachan said. “We know we need to add a few players before Jan. 10, but right now we are one of the top two teams in the league and only going to get better.
“The team believes in themselves and are a close-knit group right now,” he added. “It’s unfortunate that people won’t give us the respect we deserve, but we don’t mind working hard and proving our worth.
“Hopefully, our doubters will become fans and wish us luck and success for the rest of the year.”
