The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The La Ronge Ice Wolves showed the Flin Flon Bombers why they're the best team in their division and ranked number five in the country as of Oct. 23 by the CJAHL. First the Ice Wolves defeated the Bombers 5-4 in a heartbreaking overtime game then followed that with a 9-4 win, which the Ice Wolves had the game won after the first period 5-0 in the Whitney Forum, where fans weren't impressed. "Effort and lack of thought," says Bombers interim coach Brad Snyder, when asked what he was disappointed with. "We had no jump in the first period at all. The one thing that we instilled the last couple of weeks is work ethics. We didn't show that on the ice." It was a tough start for the Bombers and goalie Zane Kalemba, as they allowed two goals within the first two minutes because the defense couldn't clear the puck during two mad scrambles. The first goal was scored 23 seconds in. Things didn't get better for the Bombers as horrible checking by their defense resulted in a third goal being scored, then Richard Dupre, trying to carry the puck out of the zone, lost his footing, resulting in a fourth goal. "We came out slow," says Bomber rookie Kenton Staines, who had two fights during the weekend. "We just came out slow in the first period. We should have had a little more jump for sure. I think we were riding a little bit of a high from last night because we did have a good game. Just a few minute letdown last night. Other than the first period, I thought the boys played pretty good. We got to come out stronger and end stronger, that's our hardest part." Kalemba would be pulled after 10 minutes of action with his team down 5-0 and was replaced by Travis Crickard, who played a good game making 27 saves on 31 shots. He didn't allow a goal until the midway mark of the second. The Ice Wolves would beat him three more times in the third as his defense played only slightly better and he had a goal scored on him when the team thought an icing call was going to be made. "I thought it should have been icing," Crickard explains, "the guy shot it from his blueline, and our players were just standing around on center ice, figuring it would have been an icing. Just before it hits the bottom of the face-off circle, the linesman calls off the icing, and they had two guys down in our zone, I don't know, it's just frustrating." In the first game, the Bombers dominated the Ice Wolves and proved they could compete with them. The turning point of the game came with the Bombers sitting on a 4-1 lead and not pressuring their opponents more. Once the Ice Wolves scored their third goal with two-and-a-half minutes to go, they continued to battle and managed to equal the score with 19 seconds left. The heartbreaker for the Bombers came in extra time when they gave up the winning goal to Codie Pedersen 1:30 into the period on a goal that appeared Kalemba had saved. Consistency or a lack of it has been the story for the Bombers this season. With a mountain to climb after the first period in the second game, the team did an excellent job of bouncing back as they struck first with Dalton Pajak scoring 42 seconds in. Pajak finished the game by adding three assists for a four-point night, after scoring a goal and two assists in the first game. Following Pajak's second period-opening goal, was Mike McKinna, who scored breaking in from the left side of the rink and picking the top corner on former Bomber goalie Michael Pilote. That goal was McKinna's first of the 2005/06 campaign and set up by Pajak and Tyler Beachell. That gave the Bombers life, but things got ugly with a Bomber getting hit hard into the boards after the whistle and a fight ensuing. Bomber defenseman Keelan Cook dropped the gloves with Kris Desjarlais and Cook won the fight easily as he ended up on top of his foe and ready to deliver another blow. The Bomber got two more goals from Andrew Leslie and Beachell, who made it 9-4. Unfortunately, the offense came too little, too late. The top unit combined for three goals, seven assists for 10 points. In the previous game, they scored two goals, five assists for seven points for a weekend total of 17 points. "I wasn't happy with much of anything today and I think we just broke down," Snyder says of Sunday's game. "Go back to work tomorrow morning (Monday), go to practice and make up for what we didn't do for tonight's game (Sunday) and we'll get some work ethics back. We played well, we had a good little streak going here, we had five out of six points in the first three games I was here and what we gained in momentum and confidence, we blew away tonight." In the second game, Snyder rolled four lines compared to the previous game, in which the fourth line hit the ice about four to five times, yet Darryl Finnerty managed to score his first goal as a Bomber. "When you don't have players that are showing up and that you definitely got to find some that do," he says, "that's what we did, we went out and Staines, Enns and Finnerty gave us some good jump, those guys had a couple good shifts. Had a goal yesterday (Finnerty assisted by Pajak and David Holinaty), and Mr. Staines is physical, he's in the play all the time. I think they were active and when you work hard, you're going to get rewarded." Bomber Positive: Pajak earned player of the week honours for scoring two goals and five assists for seven points in two games.
