KNIGHTS TAKE GAME ONE
In the playoffs, goals are always tough to get. In game one between the Knights and the Owen Sound Attack, you needed to spell tough with a capital “T”.
In the end the Knights found ways and drew first blood in the series with a 4-1 victory.
The teams recorded all of one shot each through the first ten minutes of the game. Londoner Ethan Szypula put a puck into the middle of Tyler Parsons at the 6:38 mark and then Mitch Marner rung a puck off the shoulder of Owen Sound’s Michael McNiven halfway through the period. That spoke to just how tight the game was defensively.
Things stayed that way through the first ten-plus minutes of the second. Each team had a power play. Each team fought pucks through traffic and had shifts where they controlled pucks deep in the offensive zone, but goals were again at a premium.
It took a seemingly impossible play from Max Jones to put the first puck across a goal line. After a McNiven save, the puck went rolling away from the crease and away from Jones. Not a guy to give up on anything, Jones channelled his inner Alexandre Despatie and dove at the puck, somehow making contact and whacking it across his body from a severe angle and past McNiven for a 1-0 London lead.
A rush at the end of a penalty kill produced the second goal of the game as J.J. Piccinich crossed the Attack blue line and fed Cliff Pu, whose snap shot found the back of the Owen Sound net and it was 2-0 Knights.
Aaron Berisha scored 45 goals in the regular season and scored a rather large one in Game 1 of the post-season, stripping a puck from an Owen Sound defender and going in alone to deke and make it 3-0 Knights at the 9:24 mark of period three.
Petrus Palmu got the Attack on the board on a power play under four minutes later, but that is the only goal they would get. Mitch Marner added an empty netter to finish the scoring.
Parsons made 24 saves for London. McNiven stopped 15 pucks for Owen Sound.
Game 2 is right back in London on Saturday night at 7:00pm. Don’t forget about Fan Fest outside the Covent Garden Market and Budweiser Gardens between 4:00pm-7:00pm. You could win tickets to Saturday’s game. You can also get tickets by calling 519-681-0800 x 1, visiting the Aluminum Associates London Knights Armoury, the OMAC Mortgages London Knights Box Office or by going online to http://www.londonknights.com/page/tickets-i.
