Lucas Punkari
For fourth-year Muskie and team captain Nick Kaun, the excitement in his face and voice was easy to see.
“To finish off my high school career with a win like this is just awesome,” he enthused.
That joy was prevalent throughout the locker-room at the Ice For Kids Arena on Friday night as the Fort High boys’ hockey team captured the Northland Cup, beating the St. Thomas Aquinas Saints (Kenora) by an aggregate score of 8-4 in the two-game final.
“It’s a little bit of a bittersweet feeling for us since we’re not going to be going to OFSAA this year,” admitted forward Braden Webb.
“But to win this the way that we did, especially with the series tied up coming home, is a great feeling,” he added.
Having battled the Saints to a 4-4 tie in the series-opener last Tuesday night in Kenora, the Muskies turned in one of their strongest performances of the season in the final leg, blanking the visitors 4-0.
“The boys just dug in there and they just played awesome out there,” smiled head coach Ed Vold.
“It wasn’t just one particular person out there that led the way as they all played hard for the entire game,” he added.
The Muskies also had a little bit of an extra push from fans in the stands Friday night as the atmosphere inside the Ice For Kids Arena was arguably the best since the last “Border Battle” against the International Falls Broncos last winter.
“People don’t realize just how much the crowd helps out,” Webb noted.
“If you score a goal or make a big hit, the fans here are just cheering you on the whole time and it just gives you that extra something,” he remarked.
Dylan Curtis led the way offensively with a pair of goals Friday night while Webb and David Pryde also tallied.
At the other end of the ice, Jonah Johnson was stellar in goal, turning aside every Saints’ shot that he faced to earn the shutout.
“That was one of our strengths this year as we always had strong goaltending whether we put Jonah or Ryan [Ferguson] in there,” Vold noted.
“Heading into the game, we had planned to put ‘Fergy’ in goal,” Vold added. “But he told me beforehand that he wasn’t feeling that good, so we put Jonah in.
“He stepped right in there for us and he played awesome.”
The atmosphere in the Saints’ locker-room understandably was one of disappointment as they saw their chances of winning a league title go up in smoke.
“Some big mental lapses cost us tonight,” head coach Terry Shaw sighed.
“We had some bad turnovers on our part and we just couldn’t get the puck in deep on the power play, as it is those little things that cost you in the big games,” he explained.
“But overall, the boys played really hard and it was still a good season for us.”
In the opening game last Tuesday, the Saints erased a two-goal deficit late in regulation time to force a 4-4 tie, with forward Justis Kennedy knotting things up with just 36.5 seconds to go.
“That was a pretty tough one to take but a tie was still better than a loss,” Kaun reasoned.
“We knew that all that we had to do was to come in here and win, and it’s a lot easier to that at home instead of trying to do that on the road,” he added.
Webb led the way in Kenora with a pair of goals, with Nolan Vold and Brandon Sinclair adding singles.
“We had a tough go with them in Kenora but I think that we kept things a lot safer in our own end at home, which helped us out a lot,” Sinclair noted.
“We made the simple plays instead of just trying force things up the middle, and we just chipped the puck off of the boards a lot,” he added.
Friday’s victory marked the seventh-straight time the black-and-gold had finished atop of the heap when it comes to NorWOSSA hockey, with their last loss in a final coming back in 2006 against the Kenora Broncos.
But the Muskies won’t be heading to the OFSAA ‘A/AA’ championships in Oakville later this month as a result of the continued fallout from the teachers’ protest over Bill 115.
There will be a NorWOSSA team at the event, however, as the Saints fall under the Kenora Catholic District School Board and were unaffected by the work-to-rule edict.
In the meantime, the Muskies may have one more set of games to play before the season is officially over.
A home tournament currently is being worked on for the weekend of March 22.
“We have the ice time booked for the three days, but we just have to go about making sure that all of the teams are set for it,” Vold noted.