ROUND WON
With all of the hype that the game had around it, it was going to be tough for the London Knights and Erie Otters to create a game to match.
Talk to any of the 9046 fans inside Budweiser Gardens on Friday night and they will tell you it didn’t match the hype at all. It exceeded it.
The London Knights held on to beat the Erie Otters 4-3 on home ice to give themselves a shot at clinching first place overall and the number one seed in the playoffs. They will need at least one point in Erie on Saturday to do it.
The Knights had some battling to do to get the victory after the Erie Otters cashed in on an early opportunity. Erie sniper, Alex DeBrincat wristed home a shot from the slot, five seconds into a power play to make it 1-0.
The Knights began to build momentum throughout the period and it hit a peak with 21.8 seconds remaining as they clicked on a power play of their own. J.J. Piccinich, who had been pumping his legs and digging along the boards throughout the opening twenty minutes, got a puck along the left side, wound up and slapped it on goal and Max Jones slipped his stick through the equivalent of a squid family photo of legs and deflected the puck behind Erie goalie Devin Williams to send the teams to their dressing rooms tied 1-1.
Undeterred, the Otters grabbed the lead back inside the first three minutes of the second period as Brett Neumann whacked a backhand over the goal line to the left of the London net and Erie led 2-1.
Matthew Tkachuk tied the game on an excellent one-man effort that saw him draw a penalty, take control of a puck to the right of the Erie goal and snap it in with a man and a half on his back.
Then somebody switched on the highlight reel.
Exhibit A went to Max Jones. While killing a penalty, Jones blocked a pass, stole the puck, shoved it ahead through centre ice, beat anyone in an Erie Otters’ sweater to that puck, stopped in the Erie end and waited for any defenders to fly by and snapped it into the net and it was 3-2 for the Knights.
Mitch Marner and Christian Dvorak created Exhibit B just under five minutes after that. With the Knights on a power play and the Otters attempting that long second period line change, Tyler Parsons slung a puck up the left wing side of the ice where Marner and Dvorak were already in motion outside the Erie blue line. The puck went to Dvorak and he fed it ahead to Marner inside Otter territory and they cut to the net on a quick developing 2-on-oh or 2-on-0.5 with Erik Cernak trying to catch up. Marner deked Williams to the right and fed the puck back to Dvorak for a goal eerily reminiscent to the one that they scored the last time the teams met in London, giving the Knights a 4-2 lead through 40 minutes.
The Knights fended off the Otters through the first 19-plus minutes of the third period. With the goalie pulled, Erie managed to tighten the score on a deflection by Londoner, Kyle Pettit with just over 18 seconds remaining.
London held from there, winning their 17th game in their last 19 tries.
Mitch Marner’s assist on Dvorak’s goal was his 300th career point in the OHL.
Matthew Tkachuk extended his point streak to 19 games.
The final game of the regular season will be played tomorrow (Saturday, March 19th) at the Erie Insurance Arena. It will decide first overall. Broadcast time on NewsTalk 1290 is 6:30pm.
