Jake Karabela scored the overtime winner with 3:13 remaining in overtime as the Guelph Storm got by the London Knights 4-3 at the Sleeman Centre in Guelph, Ont., on Sunday afternoon.
The Knights erased a 2-1 third period deficit on goals by Logan Mailloux and George Diaco that came 46 seconds apart to take a 3-2 lead but Storm captain Cooper Walker jammed a puck over the London goal line with 1:07 remaining in regulation time to force OT.
Guelph opened the scoring early in the game when Braeden Bowman snapped a shot high into a top corner of the London net at 4:05 of the opening period for Bowman’s 27th goal of the season.
London came about as close as a team can come to tying things early in the second period but Patrick Leaver kept the puck out of the Guelph net.
Easton Cowan solved Leaver with a hard wrist shot from the left side to give Cowan 15 goals on the year and tie the game 1-1.
That tie only lasted 30 seconds.
Storm defenceman Chandler Romeo shot a puck that started high and deflected low off a Knight player and into the London net to give Guelph a 2-1 advantage at the end of 40 minutes.
The Knights continued to press in the third period, finding energy in legs that were playing their third game in less than 48 hours. Mailloux’s wrist shot from the right point went straight through everyone for Mailloux’s 22nd goal of the year and then Diaco fired home a Jacob Julien rebound to give London their first lead of the game.
The Storm pulled the goalie late and got the puck to the London goal line with just under two minutes left but Brochu kept it out.
Off the ensuing faceoff, Walker found a hole and tied the game 3-3, setting the stage for Karabela in overtime.
The Knights outshot Guelph 24-19.
The Windsor Spitfires hammered the Kingston Frontenacs 8-4 on Sunday, so London has a one point edge atop the Western Conference standings. Each team has 11 games left in the regular season.
The Knights will visit the Spitfires in their next game on Thursday, March 2 at 7 p.m.
Still chasing the Team of the Century
The 2004-05 London Knights who earned the name Team of the Century went 28-6 on the road. Their 28 victories remain the Ontario Hockey League record for most road wins in a single season. London’s OHL championship winning club from 2011-12 went 24-9-0-1. Right now, this year’s Knights team is 20-5-1 away from home. Both marks are still within reach, but the schedule certainly isn’t in London’s favour. They are now two games into eight straight on the road, something neither of the clubs ahead of them had to deal with in establishing the marks that they did.
A comeback for the ages
The Knights nearly pulled off a five-goal comeback against the Owen Sound Attack on Feb. 25. They fell one goal short and got to within that one goal twice. Had London pulled it off, the feat would have outdone one of the largest comebacks in franchise history that also took place in Owen Sound, Ont. On Saturday, Jan. 28, the Knights found themselves down 5-1 a little less than eight minutes into the second period. London head coach Dale Hunter made a goaltending change and 16-year-old Jordan Kooy (now with Univ. of Saskatchewan) stepped between the pipes for just the 8th time in his OHL career. That sparked the Knights. Owen MacDonald scored at 8:17 and Mitchell Stephens (Laval Rocket) notched his second goal of the game, and the lead had been cut to 5-3. Londoner Ethan Szypula made the degree of difficulty on the comeback slightly tougher by putting the Attack ahead 6-3 before the end of the second period, but it set the stage for some drama in the third. Stephens completed his hat trick and set up two other goals to push the game to overtime with a five-point night. The teams went all the way to a shootout and who else but Stephens deked home the winner.
Up next
London will continue their road trip on Thursday, March 2, in Windsor, Ont., and then Friday, March 3, in Sarnia, Ont.
The Knights, Sting and Spitfires are the top three teams in the Western Conference and London came through a gauntlet, where they faced Windsor once and Sarnia three times in the span of nine days. The Knights won three of those four games.
Coverage will begin at 6:30 p.m. both nights on 980 CFPL, at http://www.980cfpl.ca and on the Radioplayer Canada app.
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