The blink of an eye takes somewhere between 300 and 400 milliseconds.
That means that as Austen Keating bore down on the London Knight net in overtime, anyone inside TD Place in Ottawa on Friday night that didn’t have their eyes peeled may have missed seeing him slip in the puck for the game winner.
Keating scored with less than a second remaining in OT to give the Ottawa 67s a 2-1 victory over the London Knights.
The veteran Ottawa forward snagged a Hail Mary of a pass at the London blue line with roughly two seconds left, ignoring screams from fans telling him to “shoot!” in order to skate in and deke his way to an Ottawa victory. The goal was briefly reviewed, but it stood and stretched the 67s’ unbeaten streak to nine games. The Knights are 2-0-1 in their last three and heading for Kingston for a game against the Frontenacs without a whole lot of head-hanging, based on the way they played against the Ontario Hockey League’s top team.
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“I thought we played all right tonight,” said Knights assistant coach Dylan Hunter. “I thought we stuck to our guns. We had a good game plan, we created some good chances and got some good looks. Once it gets to overtime, it can go either way.”
The fact that things didn’t go London’s way didn’t seem to dampen any spirits as the players walked into the dressing room afterward.
“The guys were saying it was still a good game and that means the players are coming together,” Hunter pointed out. “It’s not the coaching staff going into the room to tell them those things, it’s the older guys who are speaking up.”
Adam Boqvist scored his first OHL goal in a game in which chances were tough to come by. Ottawa outshot London 27-19.
How the goals were scored
With the teams playing four-on-four in the second period, Will Lochead dropped a pass to Liam Foudy, who managed to draw one 67’s defender to him and then freeze another. When that happened, Foudy slid a pass down low to Adam Boqvist and he cut in front, backhanding home his first OHL goal to go along with 10 assists so far in his rookie season.
Ottawa tied the game 1-1 later in the second, as Jack Quinn skated one-on-one across the blue line, chipped the puck across the slot, reached it and shot it past Joseph Raaymakers in the Knight net.
Quinn then set up the winner late in overtime as he rifled a pass from his own zone to Keating, who used the patience and feel of a veteran to resist any urge to get a shot off before time expired and made the play that won the game.
Breakaway busters
Joseph Raaymakers stuffed two breakaway opportunities by the Ottawa 67s in the game. He got a right pad on the first one and then stayed in position to make two rebound saves. In overtime, Kody Clark took a penalty and was then fed a breakaway pass as he left the box. He deked and was stopped by Raaymakers to the left side of the net. Raaymakers then got Clark’s rebound attempt and a piece of a second rebound — a rebound that Clark got a stick on as he was falling over.
Ottawa goalie Cedrick Andree also stopped two breaks against two of the most dangerous Knights on breakaways, denying Connor McMichael and then Liam Foudy, both in the second period.
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Bouchard scores his first
Former Knights captain Evan Bouchard now has his first goal in the National Hockey League, which came on a power play at 16:28 of the first period of the Edmonton Oilers’ 4-1 win over Washington on Thursday night. Bouchard will also be able to tell his grandchildren that it came against goaltender Braden Holtby, who led the Capitals to the Stanley Cup last season.
Bouchard has now played seven games in the NHL; he can play nine before the first year of his entry-level contract kicks in. That means the Oilers have two more games to decide whether they believe he belongs with them this season or whether he should come back to London.
Welcome to the AHL
After a year in Finland, former Knight Olli Juolevi is back in North America where he didn’t make the Vancouver Canucks roster, but is off to an excellent start in the American Hockey League with Vancouver’s farm team, the Utica Comets. Juolevi had a goal and five assists in his first six games.
After a half-year with the Niagara Ice Dogs, another former Knight, Sam Miletic, was off to the same point per game pace in his first half-dozen appearances in the AHL. Miletic had three goals and three assists for the Wilkes-Barre Penguins. Miletic was a free agent signing of Pittsburgh in 2016.
Up next
London will be in Kingston for the second game of their bang-bang, back-to-back road trip in Eastern Ontario. The Frontenacs boast one of the biggest goal scorers in the Ontario Hockey League in Jason Robertson, but after taking a run at a championship in the 2017 post-season, they have lost a great deal to graduation. Former Knights Cliff Pu and Max Jones are gone and Kingston is at the root of a rebuild. They have scored fewer goals than any club outside of Flint with 30 in their first 13 contests. And Robertson has been responsible for 13 of those goals.
The pre-game show will begin at 6:30 on 980 CFPL, at www.980cfpl.ca and on the Radioplayer Canada app.
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