It didn’t start out great for the 67’s and their frustration showed through but in the end Head Coach Andrè Tourigny was happy with his team’s overall play.
“Too often when not much happens, we panic and start to open the play and give off odd-man rushes,” he explained.
“A whole bunch of nothing happened in the first two periods.”
And he’s right, not much did happen for the 67’s in the first half of the game. Ottawa only managed 7 shots on net in the first two periods. In fact, there were two moments when the they did not register a shot on net for two separate 10 minute spans.
During one of those lulls, Kenny Huether opened up the scoring catching Olivier Lafreniere out of position. Oshawa lead Ottawa 1-0 early in the second period.
As the 67’s continued to kill penalties, their ability to make plays continued to decline.
That was until Sasha Chmelevski scored with just over 4 minutes left in the third period. Then suddenly, everything opened up with back-and-forth action up to the buzzer to end regulation.
“He’s a hard working kid and especially the last few games he’s worked hard,” said Tourigny.
Following the goal, Chmelevski’s confidence skyrocketed creating a couple scoring chances in the final minutes but was unable to get anything done.
It looked like we were headed to a shootout. But after getting tripped up, Mathieu Foget drew an important powerplay late in overtime. Kody Clark ripped the puck past Kyle Keyser to end the game.
“Right from training camp, he was one of the guys that caught my eye - his speed and skill,” said Tourigny about the 2018 draft eligible. “He has a tremendous work ethic, he’s always the first guy at the rink, he’s always the first guy on the ice, works hard with our skill coach. I’m glad he’s getting rewarded for his efforts.”
The 67’s remain unbeaten on home-ice with a 4-0-0-0 record. They will look to carry this over to the road as they travel to Niagara tomorrow and wrap-up the weekend with Hamilton on Sunday afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment