The Minnesota Wilderness extended its winning streak to six games this weekend as it knocked off Kenai River and Anchorage. A 3-1 victory Friday over Kenai followed by a 4-1-win against Anchorage Saturday clinched a 4-0 first trip to Alaska for the 23-24 season. It also moved the team into a tie for first place in the Midwest Division with the Chippewa Steel.
On Friday, Oliver Stümpel scored twice, and goaltender Adam Prokop turned aside 24 Brown Bear shots in the winning effort.
Kenai (5-6-1) opened the scoring with a goal from Joe Manning with 1:41 left in the first period. The Wilderness responded quickly in the 2nd when Joe Cesario forced a turnover behind the Brown Bears net and found Cesario all alone in front. After getting the pass from Cesario, Stümpel whipped the puck past Kenai netminder Conor Sullivan to even score at 1 at the 1:47 mark.
The Wilderness followed with two more goals in the third. Dan Harkimo deposited what ended up as the game-winner thanks to an aggressive rush toward the net by Ashton Dahms. From the right point, Beau Janzig fed the puck to Dahms along the right boards. The Lakeville, MN, forward then rushed toward the net and saw his initial point-blank shot denied by Sullivan, but the rebound came right back to Dahms who then passed to Harkimo camped at the left post. Harkimo followed by sending the puck into the net for the first ever Jr. A goal for the rookie from Vasterskog, Finland.
Minnesota completed the scoring late in the final period when Stümpel was the beneficiary of another turnover forced by one of his teammates. This time, it was Daniel Astapovich who stripped the puck away from a Brown Bear along the right boards and Stümpel was able to cash in after a centering pass caught his stick with 2:21 left in regulation time.
Kenai finished with the shots-on-goal advantage at 25-24. The win for Prokop was his first in his first ever start for the Wilderness.
Neither team scored on the power play, with the Brown Bears getting three chances, and the Wilderness with one.
On Saturday, Dahms finished with a goal and an assist while three Wilderness players notched their first goals of the season. Astapovich, Nash Jacobsma and Oliver Band each scored first period markers to stake Minnesota to a 3-0 lead. Ben Dardis earned his fourth straight victory in goal turning aside 26 Wolverine shots, while playing for the first time against the team he began this season with, and where he spent his rookie Jr. A season in 2022-23.
Minnesota also converted twice on six power play chances, with the first one leading to Astapovich’s red-lighter. The forward from Birmingham, MI, helped set up a give-and-go when, from the left corner in the offensive zone, he sent the puck to Dahms along the left boards. Astapovich then skated to the front of the net calling for the pass, and Dahms delivered it, allowing Astapovich to beat goaltender Liam Beerman on the glove side to make it 1-0, 7:30 into the opening frame.
Jacobsma made it 2-0 when he finished off a 3-on-2 with 4:40 left in the first. Luca Ricciardi and Adam Johnson earned assists on the tally with a play that started when Ricciardi skated across the Anchorage blue line, fed the puck to Johnson on his right, who then caught Jacobsma in the left circle with a pinpoint cross-ice pass. Jacobsma, a forward from Billings, SD, then was equally as accurate with a shot that slipped between Beerman and the left post on the goaltender’s stick side.
Band then made it a 3-goal lead with his marker that came less than two minutes later. After forcing a giveaway at neutral ice, Band skated into the Anchorage end on the left side leading a 2-on-1 with Harkimo on the right. From the left circle, Band wired a shot that slipped through Beerman’s 5-hole and slowly made it into the back of the net with 2:45 left in the opening frame.
After a scoreless 2nd period, Anchorage made it a little closer thanks to a Danny Reis goal with 10:25 left in the third. But that was as far as the Wolverines comeback effort would go, as Minnesota restored its 3-goal advantage when it scored its second man-advantage goal of the game less than three minutes later.
The Wilderness capitalized with some solid puck movement that was capped off with Dahms scoring his team-leading eighth of the season on a shot from the left circle. Gustavs Ozolins and Harper Searles assisted on the tally which came with 7:42 left in the final frame.
Minnesota’s penalty killers held strong for the fifth straight game and finished the Alaska road trip without allowing an opponent’s power play goal on 11 opportunities. Anchorage (5-3-2) was kept scoreless Saturday on three chances.
Up next, the Wilderness (7-3-2) returns to the lower 48 with four consecutive games against Chippewa. The Wilderness and Steel will play two consecutive home-and-home series beginning October 20 in Cloquet. The opening contest next weekend will mark the first game the Wilderness will play at its home at Northwoods Credit Union Arena this season.