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Photo by John Wagner

It’s Rob Proffitt’s first law of playoff hockey: when it matters the most, you win with three things — special teams, goaltending and grit.

In a game the Ice Dogs looked at as their first playoff matchup, they were doing so well in all three areas that the always-intense Proffitt left the bench and watched the action from upstairs.

All five of Fairbanks’ goals came from special teams and goaltender Cody Reichard was strong in net as the Ice Dogs recorded a 5-2 win Friday over the Alaska Avalanche at the Big Dipper Ice Arena.

“There’s not a lot of 5-on-5 goals scored (in the playoffs), you have to be opportunistic; you’ve got to finish on special teams. We had a nice shortie, four power plays,” Proffitt said. “It doesn’t matter what you’ve done up to this point, whether you’re 40 percent (efficient), 12 percent or six percent. It starts counting (in the playoffs).”

For one night anyway, the Ice Dogs were at 40 percent, converting on four of their 10 chances with the extra attacker.

“We’ve been working on special teams in practice a lot,” said Ice Dogs forward Austin Block, who picked up Fairbanks’ short-handed goal. “Today, we’d worked hard and we just started clicking.”

The Ice Dogs scored as often on Alaska’s power play as the Avalanche did — once — and Reichard turned away 37 shots.

“The guys did a great job keeping shots from the outside,” the Fairbanks netminder said. “I didn’t really have to make any hard saves.

“Everyone knows it’s getting close to that time where every second of every game matters.”

And as a result, the Ice Dogs weren’t willing to cut themselves any breaks. Not even when the game was already in hand, not even after outplaying the Avalanche in every period, picking up a 53-39 advantage in shots.

As a result, Alex Young’s power-play goal with 54 seconds left for the Avalanche isn’t a garbage-time tally to be shrugged off, but a problem that needs to be fixed.

“We kind of let down a little bit in the third period, which is something else we’ve got to work on,” Ice Dogs assistant captain John Lennartson said. “We’ve just got to maintain a steady pace throughout the whole game.”

The Ice Dogs learned before the game that they’d be taking on Wichita Falls in the first round of the playoffs after Topeka clinched the North American Hockey League’s South Division title after a 5-3 win over Texas.

Fairbanks can clinch second place with a win, shootout loss or Wichita Falls loss or tie tonight.

But if the Ice Dogs were upset about missing out on the South crown, they didn’t show it, taking the lead 4:25 into the game on Andrew McCabe’s power-play goal, and making it 2-0 at the 12:37 mark, when Ryan Santana deflected in Arthur Bidwill’s slap shot from the left point.

“This past week, we’ve been preparing for playoffs. We took tonight’s game and we’re taking tomorrow’s (Saturday’s) game (against the Avalanche) like it’s Game 1 and 2 of the playoffs,” Lennartson said. “We’ve got to come out strong.”

The Ice Dogs came out strong enough in “Game 1” that Proffitt could pull himself away from the bench to get a new vantage point on his team, watching the second period from above the Fairbanks goal.

“I try to do that a couple times a year, but we’ve had like 100 one-goal hockey games here,” he said. “So, I told myself, no matter what happens, coach (Josh) Hauge does it in the first period and I’d do it in the second period. I’ll do it again tomorrow night ... it’s good once in a while to go up there.”

Proffitt did it to figure out what adjustments his team needs to make, but as a bonus, it allowed him a perfect view of Block’s short-handed tally.

After Drew Darwitz corralled the puck in the Ice Dogs’ zone, the defenseman sent an outlet pass to Block skating toward mid-ice. Block then deked his way past an Avalanche defender and beat Alaska netminder Nathan Corey with a backhand to the far post.

“I just skated fast, worked hard and got lucky I guess,” Block said.

Tyler Currier kept the Avalanche in the game with a breakaway goal five minutes later, but Mat Carlson and Eric Kraft put the game away with power-play goals in the third.