The right side of the door frame to the Borderland Thunder’s dressing room is lined with newly-placed pictures of past champions like Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, and Lanny McDonald touching the most impressive trophy in sport—the Stanley Cup.
But if you turned 180 degrees, that feeling of gain was juxtaposed with one of loss.
On a support beam in the middle of the crowded room, which would require at least 100 odor-eaters to repress the pungent smell that is always hanging in the air, was the obituary of Timothy Perreault, who passed away Jan. 31.
“Timmy” to his friends, “son” to his parents, “dad” to his children, and “husband” to his wife, he also played an integral role in the Thunder organization.
“We talked about Timmy, who was a big part of our organization, and his obituary talked about attitude,” noted Thunder head coach Dave Allison. “If you read his obituary, it reads: ‘Life is 10 percent of what happens to me, and 90 percent of how I choose to react to it.’”
Those words were written by Charles Swindoll in a poem entitled “Attitude.” And they not only were read, but also practised by the Thunder here Saturday night as they overcame a 2-0 deficit en route to their dramatic 3-2 victory over the front-running Fort William First Nation North Stars.
A regular-season game never meant so much for the Thunder than this one. They had been trounced 4-1 the night before (in a game controlled more by the whistle of the officials than the sticks of the players) and needed to prove to themselves that they could beat the North Stars.
That’s not to say they hadn’t before. They have, but that was back in early December (a 7-3 win). After Friday night’s loss, the Thunder fell to 1-5-2 on the season against the 14th-ranked junior team in the nation.
And that’s also not to say they didn’t play well in Friday’s game. They did, but you can’t score from the penalty box, which the Thunder occupied for 47 minutes of the game compared to the North Stars’ 29.
“The penalties kind of did us in,” said Thunder defenceman Derek Fisher.
Adding to their woes was the loss of veteran defenceman David Gooch, who re-aggravated a knee injury (Shaun Egan took his spot for Saturday’s game), and the uncertain condition of Andrew Dault, who was involved in a heart-stopping incident in the second period.
Clayton Windigo tried to shoot the puck into the North Stars’ zone, but hit Dault in the back of his neck as he waited 10 feet ahead at the blueline for the puck to enter so that he could give chase.
He dropped instantly and a hush fell over the crowd, which already had observed a moment of silence before the game in Perreault’s honour. Almost two minutes passed before any kind of movement was made.
Then after an anxious five minutes, he made it to his feet, though with assistance.
“I was scared, that’s for sure,” Dault said after the game before heading to the hospital as a precaution, adding he was conscience the whole time, but couldn’t move his extremities at first.
Dault’s misfortune only added to the team’s misery as heard by the players when they left the dressing room. “Well that . . . sucked,” said Ryan Mayman.
And it seemed that way for the start of Saturday’s game when the North Stars jumped out to a 2-0 lead after the first period, which brought this observation from Allison: “They played us like a fiddle.”
After a five-minute berating from Allison during the intermission, the veteran players also spoke out.
“Dave came in and got us fired up, and everyone knew what they had to do,” said forward Aaron Boyer, who had scored the Thunder’s lone goal Friday night, with Riley Dudar and Dault drawing the assists.
It started 2:25 into the period. North Stars’ goalie Victor Saari tried to clear the puck, but it deflected right to Dennis Morrison. He then passed to linemate Ian Lockman, who had a wide open net to shoot at.
Josh McAndrew also was credited with an assist on the power-play goal.
“I’ve got to stay out of the [penalty] box because it hurts the team,” said Lockman, who had an untimely 10-minute misconduct and two minors in Friday night’s game, but only three minors on Saturday.
“I kept my cool today to try and help my team win the game,” he added.
The second period was won by the Thunder and they headed into the dressing room with a new-found confidence. But repairs still had to be made—not on their play, but on their equipment.
With a little over five minutes left before the start of the third period, Boyer was seen outside the dressing room carving into a new stick more frantically than 300-pound man to a Thanksgiving Day turkey.
And it was Boyer who tied things up eight minutes into the third with a lovely wrister, assisted by Fisher and Dudar.
“I broke my stick, got a new twig, and it produced,” smiled Boyer, a.k.a. “Franchise,” while wearing a pair of Bono-like shades and a dark blue suit.
The question then facing the Thunder was would they play for the win, or hold back and play for the tie against the league’s most potent offence, which had entered Saturday’s contest averaging 6.65 goals per game to the Thunder’s 3.91?
Steven Sus provided the answer with a goal that surely will be tagged as one of the organization’s biggest to date with eight minutes left in regulation time.
Starting deep from the left side in the North Stars’ zone, Sus veered his way across and waited ever so patiently until Saari dropped to his knees, then roofed the puck to give his team the lead.
Fisher and Mayman got the assists.
“I’m just happy to be back in the lineup. It’s been quite a while, so I’m pretty happy to get back in,” said Sus, who has been out with a shoulder injury for almost two months.
Tyler Gordon would seal the win with some incredible saves that were Hasek-like in the way he contorted his body to avenge his loss from the night before.
His record now stands at 16-6-3.
The second-place Thunder now sport a record of 25-8-3 and next will face the 15-19-0 Dryden Ice Dogs up there tonight.
“Life isn’t fair. It’s not fair what happened to Timmy Perreault, but athletics is and we deserved to be down 2-0 after the first period and then deserved to win 3-2 after three periods,” added Allison, who served as the DJ after the game.
From Bruce Springsteen’s fabulous 2002 album, “The Rising,” Allison appropriately selected Track #8, “Let’s Be Friends,” whose chorus goes—Don’t know when this chance might come again/Good times got a way of slippin’ a-way/Let’s be friends.
“Because we weren’t too much of friends after the first period,” said Allison, who also lent his vocal chords to the song.
“Dave’s an all-right singer. He’s no Boss, but he’s all right,” laughed Boyer.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
