Wasilla travels north for another series

JEREMIAH BARTZ/ Frontiersman sports editor

FAIRBANKS - The Wasilla Spirit skated off the ice of the Curtis C. Menard II Arena with a 6-1 win over Helena on Sunday, a victory important to the Spirit for a number of reasons.

First, it stopped a two-game skid. But more than that, it gave the Spirit a win on a sheet of ice they won't see for almost a month.

Today Wasilla is in Fairbanks for the first two-games of a 29-day, 10-game road trip. As Wasilla head coach Dean Larson was preparing for the two-game series with the Fairbanks Ice Dogs, he agreed getting the win over the Bighorns was pivotal for his team.

&#8220After the two losses they guys were down,” Larson said. &#8220We ended the weekend on a positive note. We avoided going into this road trip on a negative.”

When the puck drops at the Big Dipper Ice Arena tonight at 7:30 p.m., it will be the 11th time the Alaska rivals will face-off this season. The Ice Dogs own the season series by a 6-3-1 margin, and have taken the last three from the Spirit. Fairbanks swept Wasilla at the Menard Arena in late December, and the teams split a two-game series the last time the Spirit hit Fairbanks.

As Wasilla embarks on a trip in which it will face Fairbanks, Texarkana, Texas, Wichita Falls and Sante Fe, the Spirit coaching staff will have to juggle the line chart a bit after a pair of losses.

Gavin Dittman, an Anchorage native who turned from temporary player to a Spirit scoring machine, is gone. The Colorado School of Mines student decided to lace up the skates and knock around a few pucks with the Spirit during his holiday break. He ended up knocking a few of those pucks into the opponent's net. In just six games he tallied five goals and five assists, and became and instant scoring punch on the first line.

&#8220We haven't put the puck in the net as much as we would like, and he could provide that,” Larson said.

Larson is hoping Dittman's play with the Spirit has rubbed off on some of other plays. Just seeing what Dittman was able to do in a short amount of time may give other potential scorers more confidence, Larson said.

Replacing Dittman on the first line, at least for now, Larson said, is Neil Walsky. The Anchorage native has appeared in nine games, and scored the first goal of his junior hockey career in an 8-1 win over Helena earlier this month.

&#8220He's got a lot of upside,” Larson said.

Walsky looks to provide more scoring to a first line that includes Wasilla's leading scorer David Gault, who has 15 goals and 16 assists in 42 games this season.

Also gone is Chris Conway, who was traded to the Springfield Junior Blues this week for future considerations. Larson said the trade was a mutual decision, and a change of scenery may be good for the veteran of the league. He had just three goals and six assists in 38 games this year.

Larson said there are a few candidates to plug the whole left by Conway, a winger who ate up a great deal of ice time.