Their backs against the wall after a crushing 6-4 loss to the Fort William North Stars here Friday, the Fort Frances Jr. Sabres needed to come up with a big game Saturday night to eclipse the SIJHL’s reigning dynasty.
And boy, did they ever.
Ryan Faragher stopped a whopping 53 shots, and four different Sabres scored on the power play, as Fort Frances beat the renowned North Stars by that same 6-4 margin.
“We’ll take a split,” said Sabres’ head coach Wayne Strachan. “Coming into the weekend, we sure wanted a sweep. . . .
“They came to play, they outworked us, and [Saturday night] we bounced back,” he added.
Newly-acquired defenceman Rod Bouchard opened the scoring with his first goal as a Sabre, the only tally in the first period as goalie Ryan Faragher made 22 stops—many of them acrobatic and improbable.
The North Stars roared back with a pair of goals in the second before Steven Sus and Mitch Cain each notched one to put the Sabres up 3-2 by intermission.
Alessio Tomassetti and Mike Parisien then scored four minutes into the third period to put Fort William on their heels and forcing them into taking a time-out.
The move worked as North Stars’ captain Sean Bassingthwaite scored less than a minute later, and Travis Jaspers added another shortly after, to draw Fort William back within a goal at 5-4.
But Quinn Amiel iced the win with an empty-netter—bringing the crowd to its feet.
Amiel, wearing the captain’s ‘C’ on the Sabres’ new black home uniforms, took the puck down ice while fighting off a North Stars’ backchecker. He fell to his stomach to corral a hopping puck but still managed to pop it into the empty net while lying flat on the ice.
The teams shortly retired to their respective dressing rooms, both of which promptly became quite noisy—albeit for different reasons.
Amiel was ecstatic on the ice after his goal, but wouldn’t go so far as to call it the best empty-netter of his career.
“It looked the best, I don’t know if it was, but it looked good,” he laughed afterwards. “It was definitely the most important one I’ve gotten, that’s for sure.”
While the Sabres (12-15-3-3) saved some of their best hockey for the third period, Fort William (24-9-0-2) still looked very capable of a comeback after closing to within a goal while firing 57 shots at Faragher on the night.
The win also was lent gravity after the Sabres’ tough loss the night before. David Novak let in three goals on seven shots and was pulled just over 10 minutes into the game.
After the first few minutes of the third, the North Stars had extended the lead to an untouchable 6-1 mark.
The lone bright spot on the Sabres’ roster Friday night was left-winger Brendan Baumgartner. He was a factor on every goal in the game, scoring the first two unassisted before drawing assists on the final pair.
“I wasn’t having a good week last weekend with the Bulldogs,” Baumgartner said. “Just try to have a better game, wasn’t easy to do.”
After scoring a shorthanded goal and assisting twice in the third period, all in the span of just 72 seconds, the Edmonton native was serenaded by fans, bestowing him the nickname “Bam” after the ‘U’ on the nameplate of his uniform had fallen off late in the game.
The name stuck with his teammates, too, he said, earning him the moniker “Bamgartner.”
“I don’t know, I know it’s a pretty good last name. I wonder if I can change that,” he joked.
Also assisting on Friday night’s goals by Chris Sinclair and Colin Spencer was Bouchard, who came to the Sabres from the KIJHL’s Chase Chiefs at the trade deadline.
Bouchard said he was “happy” with what he accomplished, but stressed he won’t necessarily garner three points every series.
“I try to play my kind of role, hard, aggressive, and when the points come, the points come,” he reasoned. “There’s a lot of intensity, and still a lot more we can do.”
That intensity earned him some praise from his coach.
“He was, in all honesty, one of our better players [Friday],” Strachan said. “He might not look flashy to the fans, but he gets the job done.”
The Sabres now host the Thunder Bay Bearcats this coming weekend, meaning Fort Frances won’t get much of a break after facing the North Stars this past weekend.
The Bearcats are 22-12-0-0—14 points ahead of the Sabres in the standings.
“The Bearcats apparently picked up a few extra players [at the trade deadline] they didn’t have before,” Amiel noted. “They didn’t play [captain Brad] Pawlowski last time, and he just makes them a thousand times better. . . .
“We gotta look at it like this series [against Fort William],” he added.
Strachan agreed. “Just to play the Bearcats and even split with them will be a great feat,” he remarked.
“I think we can beat ’em,” Baumgartner countered. “We beat them before. They’re a good hockey team, but we’ve beat them before, we can beat them again.”
Saturday night’s game goes at 7:30 p.m. at the Ice for Kids Arena, with Sunday’s game getting underway at 3:15 p.m.
The Bearcats also will also have Emo’s Luke Judson back in their lineup, who burned the Sabres with two goals and an assist in his last game here back on Oct. 6.
Judson also has earned a couple of call-ups to the OHL’s Belleville Bulls over the season.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
