Dylan Edwards Continues Hot Scoring with 15th, Erie Falls In Front of 4000+
Wednesday night’s rivalry game would be off to the races as soon as the puck dropped. High defensive pressure from both teams would see only two shots, one from each side, in the first three minutes, but the Knights would break through off a Jacob Julien (27) shot to put London up 1-0. Erie would find themselves on the penalty kill just above the halfway mark in the first period and with nineteen seconds left on the kill, London would find the back of the net again to make it a 2-0 game. The Otters would have a power play opportunity of their own less than a minute later after a London interference penalty. Erie would be unable to convert the power play and even-strength play would resume. The London Knights would outshoot the Otters 13-2 with four minutes left in the first period. Malcolm Spence, in the line-up for the Otters for the first time in two games, would have the best chance of the period, and a diving defensive play from Captain Spencer Sova would keep the Knights from scoring in a 3-on-1 opportunity in the final five seconds of the period. The Otters would go into intermission down 2-0 and being outshot 14-5.
Rivalry tempers would flare in the second period as both teams would send a player to the penalty box for roughing, and the Otters would find some momentum with four-on-four hockey. They would record three quick shots to test London goaltender Owen Willmore. Neither team would break through the period’s stalemate and five-on-five hockey would resume. Erie’s goaltender, Ethan Fraser would hold his own on the London attack, weathering back-to-back shots to keep the London lead to two. With less than three minutes left in the period, Erie would go on the power play for the second time, but with thirty-five seconds left on the man advantage, Erie’s Ondrej Molnar would get called for interference and the game would be temporarily at four-on-four play. With the second period’s final buzzer, the Otters would have killed off ninety seconds of the London power play and narrowed the shot gap to 21-17.
After a scoreless second period and with twenty minutes of opportunity ahead of them, the Otters would find themselves again on the penalty kill after Matthew Schaffer would get called with a check to the head. Erie would successfully kill the penalty and play would return to even-strength. With 13:35 left in the final period, the Otters would go on the power play and Ethan Fraser would come up huge on a London breakaway to keep the Knights’ lead to 2-0. Alex Messier and Alec Leonard would drop the gloves and have at it, putting both of them in the penalty box for five minutes at the same time that Sam Alfano’s ten-minute misconduct penalty finished. As play resumed and four-on-four play began, it would be Dylan Edwards (15) for Erie to break through and cut the London lead to 2-1. It would be a revolving door of penalties for Erie as Messier and Leonard would return to the ice and Wesley Royston would be given a major penalty for a check to the head and ejected for the rest of the game, putting the Otters back on the penalty kill. Twenty seconds later, Kasper Halttunen (32) would find the back of the net for London and extend their lead to 3-1. Still on the penalty kill and now down by three, the Otters would resume their comeback bid. However, four minutes later, the Knights would strike again to make it 4-1. Thirty-three seconds later, the Knights would put the final nails in the coffin and Kaleb Lawrence (18) would find his second goal of the night and make it a 5-1 game.
