Wednesday, May 4, 2023.
9:50 p.m.
No one on the London Knights or the Kitchener Rangers at that very moment can forget what happened.
A rebound kicked out to the left of the London net to overage forward Mike Petizian and Petizian put home the overtime, game and series winner that had seen the best-of-7 between the two clubs pushed to its absolute limit.
It saw a dejected Knights team skate off the ice for the final time that season after pouring 54 pucks at the Ranger net only to be left to wonder why the series didn’t end up going their way.
“That feeling of losing in a Game 7… there really can’t be a worse feeling,” describes Knights assistant coach Rick Steadman. “It gets you all the way down and it’s really tough on everybody. You don’t want to feel that again.
“(The players) know what they need to do. They know how hard it’s going to be and how every little play can make the difference in the way that this goes.”
Kitchener went on to lose to the Windsor Spitfires in five games in the second round.
This year the teams find themselves head-to-head again for the 12th time in their long histories, but things have been heating up in recent years. Seven of those series have taken place since 2010.
The Rangers became the first 8th seed in OHL history to sweep a top seed when they knocked off Windsor in four games.
London completed a four-game sweep of the Owen Sound Attack at almost the exact same time.
There are 23 players who were part of the two teams in 2022.
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Logan Mailloux and Isaiah George were on the London roster a year ago but neither player was able to play because of injury.
George was injured in Game 2 against Owen Sound and is listed as day-to-day with an upper-body injury.
“(The Rangers) ended our season last year and that has been with us. It didn’t sit well with us,” says Mailloux.
Knights goalie Brett Brochu echoed the same sentiment.
“We get another kick at the can,” admits Brochu.
Additions by trade
While all kinds of faces are the same, each team has added some new players.
The big adds for Kitchener are Dallas Stars prospect Francesco Arcuri, Winnipeg Jets draft pick Danny Zhilkin and overager Lleyton Moore. All were acquired in trades this year as was goaltender Marco Costantini who backstopped the Hamilton Bulldogs to the OHL championship in 2022.
The Knights added three former Bulldogs in Ryan Humphrey, Ryan Winterton and Londoner George Diaco who is now a London co-captain. All three have already scored big goals. Diaco and Humphrey notched overtime winners and Winterton had three goals and five points in four games.
Additions in other ways
Jacob Julien joined the London roster in early December and has steadily grown his game ever since. Julien scored the first goal of the series against the Attack and added two assists in the opening series.
Filip Mesar was an Import Draft pick by the Rangers and is property of the Montreal Canadiens. Mesar is a game-breaker.
Nitty gritty numbers
The Knights gave up just six goals in four games in the first round. Brett Brochu posted two shutouts. Goals are tough to come by in the post-season and London made them almost impossible to find for Owen Sound. They will need to make life as difficult as possible on the high-octane Kitchener forwards.
The Windsor Spitfires owned the second-best power play in the OHL in the 2022-23 regular season. It was 0.1 per cent behind the first-place Sarnia Sting. The Rangers took it down to 6.2 per cent in the playoffs and scored four short-handed goals. Francesco Pinelli had two of those goals. Pinelli will miss the first two games against the Knights as he finishes a three-game suspension.
What to expect
London won the regular season series 5-1. Don’t expect that.
Two games in February between the teams are likely more indicative of the way this series will go.
They ended 5-4 and 4-3 in overtime. The Knights managed to win both of them but it took solid play and timely scoring.
The team that finds those ingredients most easily this time around is the team that will walk away smiling from the handshake line.
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