By Brett Richter
With the regular season rapidly coming to a close, the Ironwood Lumberjacks looked forward to a weekend series with the Thunder Bay North Stars, a team they could potentially meet in the upcoming playoff round. The North Stars arrived in Ironwood with 25 wins on the season and a power play running at roughly 30%. The Lumberjack locker room knew it would take a strong effort to compete with the visitors.
Friday, March 6: The Lumberjacks took the ice with a short bench. A lingering locker room illness and a few key injuries forced Head Coach Doug Lein and rest of the staff to re-adjust the forward lines and defensive pairings. Gavin Covrig was given the net responsibilities for the opening night’s game.
The first 20 minutes of the game found an even ice surface and balanced play from both teams. The visitors were able to put one goal in the Lumberjack net and took a one goal lead into the locker room. Coach Lein was pleased with the balanced play and effort encouraging the team to stay with the game plan – there was hope during the intermission. But that is where the hope faded.
In the next 40 minutes, the home team slowly morphed away from the systems set in place by the coaching staff and returned to an individual player focused game. With the loss of focus and team play, the visitors jumped on the home team and added three goals in the second period. At the start of the third period, Will Porter added a power play goal for the Jacks to breathe some life into the attack, but only briefly. The North Stars added three more goals in the third building to a final score of 1-7. Tomorrow would be a new day.
Saturday, March 7: Knowing the guys on the roster were capable of better effort, in his pre-game talk, Coach Lein broke down Friday’s game and encouraged the team to play 60 minutes like they played the first 20 minutes of the Friday contest. The game started with another player not making the opening faceoff reducing the bench size by one more body. Unfortunately, additional in-game injuries continued to reduce the roster throughout the entire 60 minutes of the contest.
Digging deep within, the Lumberjacks roster came to play with an effort not seen in many weeks. The visitors scored in the opening period. Early in the second period, Bennet Arro ripped a beautiful shot past the visiting goalie to tie the game at one. Arro’s goal was assisted by Gavin Lafferty and Ryland Elsenpeter. The North Stars added two more goals before assistant captain Tim Hanulik scored his seventh goal of the season, a power play goal, with less than one minute remaining in the period giving the Jacks new life. Christian Storey and Jack Carruthers were credited with assists on the Hanulik goal. In net, Connor Doyle made several strong saves to keep the Lumberjacks within reach.
Although strong play continued throughout the third period, the North Stars added two goals in the session, one of them a late period empty net tally, to finalize the score 2-5 in favor of Thunder Bay. Saturday was a difficult loss but the level of compete shown by the Lumberjacks offered a glimmer of hope moving into playoff time.
The playoff schedule will be released shortly.