Sam Miletic scored his second goal of the game on a power play at 3:47 of overtime to lift the London Knights to a 4-3 win over the Saginaw Spirit at Budweiser Gardens on Friday night.
The victory gave London a sweep of back-to-back home games and moved them past the Erie Otters into seventh place in the Western Conference standings.
It was the third game of the season between the Knights and the Spirit and it was the third time the teams had gone to OT. The Knights won the first meeting with a game-winner from Evan Bouchard and Saginaw won in London on Nov. 3 on a goal by Brady Gilmour.
The game seemed filled with big offensive chances and even bigger saves from London’s Joseph Raaymakers and Saginaw’s Evan Cormier.
Overtime also had a fair share of intrigue as both captains were given separate minor penalties.
First Robert Thomas of the Knights was called for boarding and then Keaton Middleton of the Spirit was given a hooking penalty as he tried to keep Miletic from getting to the net on a partial breakaway.
After a 1-8-1 start, London has gone 8-2-2 in their last 12 games.
How the goals were scored
After scoring once and setting up three others on Thursday against Guelph, London forward Cliff Pu picked up where he left off in the game against the Spirit. He threaded a pass from the right side of the Saginaw end to a hard-charging Miletic, who came flying into the slot in the Spirit zone. Miletic beat Cormier with a low snap-shot to give London a 1-0 lead and extend his point streak to six games.
Miletic helped to set up the second Knights’ goal at 4:47 of the second period as he took a feed from London captain, Robert Thomas in the slot, but instead of shooting, he paused and found Evan Bouchard at the side of the Saginaw goal and the third-year defenceman guided the puck across the goal line to make it 2-0 for the Knights.
Saginaw cut London’s lead in half at the 10:08 mark of the second as Mason Kohn set up in front of the Knight net on the power play and pounded home a pass from Cole Coskey.
Kohn’s second of the game tied things up at 18:29 as he knocked in a rebound on a Marcus Crawford shot and the teams reached the end of 40 minutes with a 2-2 score on the board.
Pu put the Knights ahead early in the third using tremendous speed to get to a loose puck in centre and zoomed in on a breakaway and beat Cormier with a shot to the glove side.
D.J. Busdeker tied the game at 10:36 of the third as he snapped a shot past Raaymakers on a cross-ice feed from Coskey.
In overtime, Thomas left the penalty box, picked up the puck, made his way across the Saginaw blue line, weaved into the slot, got tripped up, but stayed on his feet and slid a pass to Miletic who ripped home the game-winning goal.
“Look good, feel good, play good.”
It isn’t grammatically correct, but it’s a favourite line of hockey players and it applied to Raaymakers on Friday night. Raaymakers has been wearing Knights-coloured pads for a couple of games, but on Friday, the Chatham native showed off his new mask and then showed off some acrobatics early, making 13 first period saves. His biggest may have come off Londoner, Aiden Prueter who was set up on a 2-on-1, only to have Raaymakers lunge across the net to rob him.
Raaymakers saved his biggest stop with 8:15 to go as Busdeker broke in alone while the Spirit were killing a penalty. Busdeker tried to slip a backhand through the legs of the 19-year-old, but he got his legs closed and kept the puck out.
Hometown treatment
Prueter spent last year playing for the London Jr. Knights and missed the first Saginaw game in London while he was away playing at the Under-17 hockey challenge. As the Spirit stepped onto the ice for warm-up, they let Prueter lead them out and then no one went with him. He spent a good 40 seconds skating around the ice by himself before his teammates joined him, chuckling all the way into their zone.
Down to three over-agers
London traded winger Adrian Carbonara to the Niagara Ice Dogs on Friday for a fourth-round pick in 2020. The Knights were going to have to make a move with one of their 20-year-olds before the trade deadline when all teams must be down to three. That leaves London with Sam Miletic, Tyler Rollo and Shane Collins as their three OAs.
Up next
The Knights will play the Windsor Spitfires for the fourth time this season on Sunday, Nov. 19. The first three meetings came inside the first nine games of London’s season and the Spitfires won all of them. The last one was a perfect depiction of what was happening to the Knights through a 1-8 start. London outshot Windsor 39-11 and ended up losing 2-1. Since that game, the Knights are 8-2-2 and scoring has not been a problem. London has 26 goals in their last 5 games and that has them looking forward to a chance to prove themselves against the Spitfires.
The pre-game show begins at 1:30 on Sunday on Global News Radio – 980 CFPL, at www.980cfpl.ca and on the Radioplayer Canada app.
After that game, the Knights will head to Sarnia on Wednesday, Nov. 22 for their first meeting of the season with the Sting.
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