KNIGHTS SECURE FIRST WIN OF THE SEASON
The London Knights may not be able to explain it, but as a franchise, they just play well when they go to Owen Sound.
A 4-3 shootout win on Saturday night kept a streak alive that dates back to early April of 2011. That was the last time the Attack beat the Knights on their home ice. In fact, the Knights have only lost once to Owen Sound overall since then, on February 8th, 2013 in London.
The Knights and Attack battled the game to extra time and after a near 10-minute dry scrape of the ice (new rule), the five minutes that followed solved nothing.
Mitch Marner and Julius Bergman scored in the shootout and Michael Giugovaz made two saves to make the difference in London’s first victory of the season.
The Attack suffered their second consecutive shootout loss after falling to Kitchener on Friday night.
After being held scoreless on opening night, Brett Welychka took just over three minutes to do what the Knights could not do against the Plymouth Whalers. The veteran London native tipped in a point shot by Julius Bergman on the power play to put London ahead 1-0.
The Knights played like they were following the formula for a road game to a “T”. London surrendered just one shot in the first ten-plus minutes of the game before the Attack got some momentum from a power play. While the Attack did not score on the man advantage, they did find the back of the London net just over two minutes later as Daniel Milne found Holden Cook going to the net and he beat Michael Giugovaz to tie the game 1-1.
Giugovaz make some solid stops in his first period in a Knights’ uniform, including a huge glove grab on a shot by former London Knight, Kyle Platzer.
The second period saw just one goal as Kyle Platzer dropped a pass to Daniel Milne and he wired a slap shot high into the Knights’ net to put Owen Sound ahead for the first time in the game.
The lead didn’t last long as some grit from C.J Yakimowicz and Owen MacDonald got the puck to rookie defenceman, Brandon Crawley and he scored his first OHL goal from the top of the left circle to make it 2-2.
Then Christian Dvorak of the Knights picked off a pass in the Owen Sound zone, walked into the slot and scored to put the Knights ahead 3-2.
An Owen Sound power play evened things 3-3 as Chris Bigras picked up a rebound and slapped the puck past Giugovaz.
That’s the way the score stayed until the shootout.
The Attack outshot London 34-25.
The Knights will spend Sunday in Toronto as a team and attend the Leafs/Sabres exhibition game Sunday night.
They will return home to face the Kitchener Rangers on Friday night at 7:30.
Mike Stubbs
NewsTalk 1290 CJBK – Play by Play Voice of the London Knights
