Mitch Calvert
That’s all she wrote, folks.
In another down-to-the-wire finish, the Fort Frances Jr. Sabres fell 3-1 in Game 5 of their best-of-seven SIJHL semi-final series last night to be eliminated by the host Thunder Bay Bearcats.
Colin Moberly opened the scoring just 2:13 into the game to put the Sabres up 1-0, but Kyle Tront tied it up before the first period was half over.
Fort Frances native Tyler Miller drove the final nail in the coffin when he netted the eventual game-winner just shy of three minutes into the second.
The Sabres sparked a late flurry in the third, but couldn’t sneak the equalizer past Bearcats’ goalie Drew Strandberg.
Mitch Marostica scored into the empty net with just three seconds left to officially send the Bearcats to the SIJHL final against either the Fort William North Stars or Schreiber Diesels.
“Our third period was our best,” Sabres’ head coach Wayne Strachan said. “We played with emotion, urgency, [but] we just couldn’t get one to go past their goalie.
“The first two periods we played well, but looked like we were afraid to make a mistake and played very conservative,” he added.
“You need a bounce here or there to get a break, and we didn’t get any lucky ones this series.
“That’s the way this game goes sometimes,” Strachan reasoned.
Some will point to the way Game 4 here Sunday night ended on a controversial overtime winner by Tront as the true turning point of the series.
“We will never know how much the decision on Sunday weighed into the series,” Strachan
admitted.
“Would we have won the game? We may have, and it sure would’ve been a different story if we had [knotting the series at 2-2].
“Did it play a toll on these young men? I believe it did,” Strachan added. “I am more disappointed for the players, though, and having to go through it.
“I hope the ref can sleep at night knowing he made a God-like call to end a game.”
The Sabres can take solace in the fact they held an offensively-explosive team to just 12 goals in the five-game series (one into the empty net), but on the down side could only muster eight of their own, including one into an open cage in the final minute of their lone win here Saturday night.
“We knew team defence would give us a chance to win the series if we were at the top of our game,” Strachan noted. “We worked all year knowing we would have to face these guys or the [Fort William] North Stars at some point in the playoffs, who are both highly-talented teams.
“For the most part, we battled hard and fought hard to try and win.”
Strachan also said scoring by committee was the only way they were going to pull off the upset—and that, quite frankly, didn’t happen.
“We had scoring from our top line, but we didn’t have the secondary scoring we had all year from some other guys to get the job done,” he lamented.
“We are a team that can return some 19 players if they all choose to come back, [and] I feel can definitely be a contender in our league for next season,” Strachan added.
The North Stars lead the Diesels 3-2, and can wrap up that semi-final series tonight in Schreiber.
