Sept. 26, 2008
Box Score
by Matias Saari, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
FAIRBANKS — A last-gasp effort by Dustin Sather sent the Alaska Nanooks Blue-Gold Game into a shootout on Friday night to the delight of fans at a nearly full Patty Center.
With an empty Blue net behind him and the clock winding down, Sather chased down a loose puck and fired a desperation shot that freshman Adam Cardwell tipped past Gold goalie Scott Greenham a blink before the scoreboard turned to 0:00.
“I didn’t really know how much time was left. I just went to the net and I saw Sather going for the puck in the high slot,” Cardwell said. “He turned and shot and I just got a stick on it.”
Cody Rymut of the Gold team couldn’t believe what he’d witnessed.
“I don’t know how they got that puck through,” Rymut said. “That was a prayer all right. We shouldn’t have let them get in the zone in the first place.”
Blue’s never-say-die attitude pleased new head coach Dallas Ferguson.
“That’s important as a Nanook program, an identity, and we never quit,” Ferguson said. “You kind of saw it in that group.”
The play at the end of the second 20-minute half knotted the game 2-2 and forced a shootout. Unfortunately for the Blue, its last-second heroics were for naught as Gold prevailed in the shootout after Ryan Hohl gave his team a 2-1 advantage on their final shot and Greenham made a glove save on Fairbanks’ Derek Bradish to clinch the 3-2 win.
Exhibition or not, the intensity on both sides was evident.
“It’s always a competition in your lockerroom,” Cardwell said. “You’re not going to line somebody up (for a big hit) on your own team, but we definitely played serious.”
All bets are off, however, in an exhibition at 7:05 tonight at the Patty against the U.S. Under-18 National Team.
“We don’t have any friends on the (other) team,” Cardwell said. “We just play real hard-nosed hockey.”
Part of the mission Friday was executing the systems Ferguson is implementing for the young squad that features 12 freshmen.
“I think a few times we made some errors through the middle of the ice, but aside from that we tried to keep it simple for the most part,” said Rymut, who after the first half switched from the Blue to Gold team along with Greenham and two other players. “I think tomorrow night you’ll see a little better performance. It’s tough playing two lines on one squad.”
Ferguson said the goal is for the Nanooks to improve every time they take the ice.
“You want to see progress every day, regardless of whether it’s a Blue-Gold game or if it’s practice or whatnot,” he said. “I saw it at times (Friday) but, you know, this is the first time we’ve been on the ice in a game situation.”
Another highlight of the Blue-Gold game is the skills competition between periods. Fans got to see each player on a breakaway (goalies Chad Johnson, Eric Babcook and Greenham stopped 18 of 25) and then watched Rymut speed to a win in the eight-player fastest skater competition.
“I was pretty confident. The time trials at the start of the year I won, so I was feeling pretty good,” said Rymut, who benefited from an opponent’s fall in the semifinals.
“I think I got lucky with Derek Klassen going down. I think he had the edge on me,” Rymut said.
The hardest shot event was a bust this year. After sophomore Kevin Petovello blasted a shot 96 miles per hour and Bradish recorded 94, the radar machine malfunctioned and Cody Butcher, Hohl and Dustin Molle were unable to give their best shots.
“We had a new gun this year and we tried it out before we actually went on the ice,” Ferguson said. “Everything seemed like it was working so we just had a glitch in the program.”
