Mitch Young and Easton Walos each scored once and added an assist as the Sarnia Sting downed the London Knights 5-1 to put a bow on the 2025 calendar year.
The year saw London capture their third Memorial Cup championship and end with an overall record of 68-20-5 through regular season games, playoff games and Memorial Cup tournament games.
Henry Brzustewicz scored his team-leading sixth power play goal to begin the scoring as Ben Wilmott’s shot rebounded off Brzustewicz and into the Sting net at 13:55 of the first period for a 1-0 Knights lead.
Sarnia got a fortunate bounce of their own just under five minutes later as a dump in bounded over bodies and landed with on the stick of Beckham Edwards, and he wired home his 14th of the year to send the teams to their dressing rooms tied 1-1.
Brenner Lammens gave the Sting their first lead of the game on another odd bounce as his dump-in from just outside the London blue line that hit the ice just outside the Knights crease and boinged its way in at the 11:17 mark of period two.
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Mitch Young made it 3-1 for Sarnia on a nice individual effort with just over two minutes remaining in the middle period as he moved to the left side of the London zone before Young snapped a shot into the Knight net. Sting then went to the final 20 minutes with a two-goal lead.
Kaden Aucoin increased that advantage to three goals when he scored his first OHL goal on a short-handed breakaway, unassisted at 10:03 of the third.
Walos buried the final goal of the game on a setup from Sting forward Alessandro Di Iorio with 4:02 remaining.
Will Nicholl and Jesse Nurmi made their season debuts for the Knights in the game.
Nicholl has been on schedule to return from an upper body injury that had kept him out all year.
Nurmi was a bit of a surprise. He began this year with the New York Islanders organization but was injured and only saw 12 games of action with the Worcester Railers of the ECHL. The Islanders assigned Nurmi to London on Dec. 30.
The Knights were 1-for-5 on the power play.
Sarnia was 0-for-3.
Shots were 27-27.
Four area ties to Canada’s Men’s Olympic team
Hockey Canada announced the roster that will represent Canada at the 2026 Winter Games in Italy in February.
Londoners Drew Doughty and Nick Suzuki are on the team and so are former Knights players Bo Horvat and Mitch Marner.
Horvat is from Rodney, Ont.
Marner and Doughty were on the Canadian roster that won the 4 Nations Faceoff.
The men’s hockey tournament will take place Feb. 11 to 22 on days 11-16 of the Games.
Up next
The Knights host the Flint Firebirds in their first game of 2026 on Friday, Jan. 2 at 7 p.m., at Canada Life Place.
The teams have met twice so far this season with London winning the first game 5-4 in overtime on home ice and Flint winning 3-2 at the Dort Financial Center in Michigan.
Coverage will begin at 3:30 p.m. on 980 CFPL, at www.980cfpl.ca and on the iHeart Radio and Radioplayer Canada apps.
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