Five-Unanswered Goals, 11 Combined Points from Alfano/Fimis/Edwards Line Gives Erie 7-4 Win
St. Catharine’s, Ontario – One last business trip against the East! For the final time – barring a run to the Ontario Hockey League Finals – the Erie Otters would battle against an Eastern Conference opponent, traveling to the Niagara region to take on the IceDogs. After a disappointing effort on Wednesday night against the rival London Knights, Erie would hope to get back into the win column for the first time since its last battle with a team from the opposing conference – especially with Niagara being last place in the OHL. Ethan Fraser would once again get the start in net for Erie.
If you were looking for goals in the opening period, you would once again be pleased. It would be the Dylan Edwards (16,17) show in the first period, as the dynamic forward would net two opening period goals – one to open scoring, and one to knot the game up in the final five minutes of the frame. Between those two Edwards goals, Ivan Galyianov (7) and Kevin He (31) would put goals on the board for the upstart IceDogs, and a final goal from Gavin Bryant (18, PPG) would put Niagara up after 20 minutes with a 3-2 lead – despite Erie leading in shots 14-6.
The offensive flow of this game would continue in period two, but it would take some time. While Erie would add another 15, it would be Niagara who would fire the puck the most with 18 shots of their own. 13 minutes into the period, with a power play for Erie underway, Gavin Bryant (19, SHG) would net Niagara’s only goal of the period to make it 4-2 IceDogs. From here, Erie would begin its comeback march. :95 after the Bryant goal, Pano Fimis (23) would get Erie on the board for the first time in the second, and Sam Alfano (24) would assure Erie would not trail after 40. Despite the shot from Alfano immediately being called no-goal, the forward would be sure that he had a good clean goal, and be vindicated by the video review. Erie would outscore Niagara 2-1 in the second, and have a 4-4 game after 40.
Erie’s hot finish to the second would carryover to a ready-to-close mentality in the third. With a huge power play opportunity in a tie game, Sam Alfano (25, PPG, GWG) would be the hero the Otters deserved by jamming the puck through at point-blank range to give Erie a 5-4 lead. They’d never look back. Just over three minutes later, Brett Hammond (2) would receive a perfect feed from Alex Messier and put it home for his first road goal in the OHL and a 6-4 lead. With the bottlecap of emotion popping off late in the game, Erie would put the cherry on top of the game with an empty-net, shorthanded goal by Martin Misiak (19, SHG, ENG) in the final two seconds to cap off five-unanswered goals and a 7-4 victory. The win would give Erie the season-series win, 4-2.
Erie will now prepare for the final game in the penultimate week, returning home for Saturday’s St. Patrick’s Celebration. This game will feature an Eclipse Cup giveaway (pres. by Erie’s Total Solar Eclipse), specialty warmup jerseys, and Erie’s final regular season game against Memorial Cup host Saginaw. Erie will then have three final games in the 2023-24 OHL regular season, with a Wednesday/Thursday road pair in Flint and Windsor, before battling the Kitchener Rangers on home ice for the regular season finale.
