OLIVER PAIPOONGE – The Kam River Fighting Walleye have a little work to do to catch the front-running Dryden Ice Dogs.
They made a statement about their situation on Friday night, storming past the Ice Dogs 6-1 at Norwest Arena to close the point-gap to seven – with two games in hand.
Jett Mintenko and Carter Poddubny each scored once and added an assist to help pace the Fighting Walleye attack and get them back in the win column, the victory their eighth in their past 10 outings.
Sam Sargent, Daxton Lang, Zach Baumann and Carter Nailen also scored for Kam River (14-7-0).
Jordan Wales had Dryden’s only goal, beating Ashton Sadauskas early in the second period to tie the game 1-1 at the time.
Sadauskas was good on the other 26 Dryden shots.
Braxton Castagno allowed six goals on 41 shots faced to take the loss.
The two teams will do it again on Saturday, this time in Dryden.
Dryden dropped to 17-5-1 with the defeat.
Thunder Bay 4, Fort Frances 2: The Lakers held the lead twice during the Fort William Gardens contest, but couldn’t hang on against a North Stars team bent on not disappointing the hometown crowd. Max Buffone scored the go-ahead goal with 4:58 to go in the second and Eric Sheriff added an insurance marker midway through the third to help propel Thunder Bay to victory. Evan Simeoni and Marcellus Francis, with his 11th of the season, scored the North Stars other goals. Evan Kabel and Piece Gouin had the Lakers tallies. Thunder Bay improved to 13-6-1 while the Lakers fell to 9-7-5. They’ll meet again on Saturday
Ironwood 8, Kenora 1: In the battle of the basement, the Lumberjacks made easy work of the Islanders with a seven-goal win on home ice. Aidan Charron had two goals and two assists for Ironwood, with Matteo Salvatore adding a pair of goals too. Thomas Marshall finished with a goal and four assists. Konnor Sapp scored Kenora’s only goal, beating Trent Boryszczuk five minutes into the third.
Sioux Lookout 3, Red Lake 2: Ty Kirk scored the overtime winner to lead the second-place Bombers to an overtime win at Cochenour Arena in Red Lake. Sioux Lookout’s Owen Riffel sent the game to OT with his ninth of the season at 13:32 of the third. Corbyn Demchuk and Jager Marshall scored for the Miners. Owen Cotter had the Bombers other goal.
