In my five seasons as the sports reporter for The Times, nothing has been more magical to cover from start to finish than this Lakers’ season. From an opening weekend sweep to jump out to 2-0, followed by another winning weekend to go 4-0, something about this team felt different from those of the previous four years.
Head Coach and General Manager Luke Judson really put a charge into a great team of players and human beings that took to the ice each week to represent Fort Frances. That only seemed to get better as the season wore on under the guidance of a great coaching staff.
Seeing the Ice for Kids Arena full to the brim for the first time down the stretch and into the playoffs was a beautiful thing to watch.
Even in the midst of a playoff run, as annoying as it might have been for the guy trying to get interviews done, the team still had time for the fans, the kids who would come down to the dressing room after games. The stick begging might get a little annoying, but the players on the Lakers team this year knew that those young fans loved them and did their best to accommodate them, signing autographs even after the most gruelling contests on the ice.
Working as a sports reporter can be tough. You have to write about a team’s or an athlete’s highs and lows. As fun as it was to see the Lakers beat Thunder Bay in their home rink and experience the highs, just a few days later, it was devastating to see them go through the lowest of lows after an overtime loss in Game 7 of the finals
As a sportswriter, I’m supposed to try to be unbiased, but I’m also a sports fan; if you’ve never watched a game with me, you’d probably get a chuckle. Thankfully, when the newspaper only really covers one team, it’s a bit easier to root for the home side.
I spent a few minutes on the ice taking photos of Thunder Bay receiving the trophy, then headed back to the sombre atmosphere near the Lakers’ dressing room.
The team was coming out of the room and having shared their initial despair, players emerged half in and out of their gear to commiserate with family and alumni.
You’d never expect it, but some of those hockey players, the ones that had just been chirping, swearing and beating the crap out of the other team on the ice, were more emotional after that loss than I expected.
I often find hockey players to be rather stoic (sometimes it’s hard to even get them to smile for a photo after they’ve won an award), but I think a sense of what they’d accomplished—winning the top seed in the league, only losing one game all year on home ice, carrying the team to its best finish in a long time on top of the marathon of the last month or so—finally came to a head for many.
While they weren’t taking photos with the trophy they’d come so close to capturing, some still chose to mark the occasion with a photo with family, friends or teammates.
For some players and families, that loss might spell the end of an era. Unless they’re going on to another level of hockey, this might have been it, so you have to feel for them. Others will hopefully be back for another kick at the can next year, and others still will move on to further their hockey ambitions with the next level of challenge, changing leagues or going on to play college hockey.
As the offseason begins and the new quest to bring the Bill Salonen Cup back to Fort Frances ramps up, The Fort Frances Times will continue to provide fans with coverage of the next chapter in the history of the Fort Frances Lakers.
