London Knights vs Erie Otters – 7:30 p.m. – Budweiser Gardens, London, Ont.
Broadcast: 6:30 p.m. – AM980, http://player.am980.ca and Radioplayer App
Former Knights’ forward Brian Dobbin set an OHL record with an 18-game goal scoring streak in 1984-85. He talked about it with AM 980’s Mike Stubbs:
Where the teams sit
The Otters are in first place overall in the OHL standings.
The London Knights are four points back with a game in hand.
Between them, you can find the Soo Greyhounds, three points back of Erie.
One point behind the Knights is Owen Sound.
Confused? It’s hard not be.
There are 10 days left in the OHL’s regular season and it may take every minute of all 10 to sort out who is going to finish where.
This is a big game for Erie, but they still have some breathing room. For the Knights, this is their shot at first place. Lose this game and they will be six points behind with six games remaining. Against a team like the Otters, that is too much to make up.
London is coming off an offensive explosion last night against the Guelph Storm. Sam Miletic led the way with two goals and two assists as the Knights won 8-2.
Erie went into Windsor, scored twice in the final two minutes of the second period and won 4-2.
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The season series so far
It’s really the difference between the teams in the standings. London and the Otters split the first two meetings by lopsided 6-2 and 7-1 scores.
On Jan. 27 at Budweiser Gardens, the Knights came out flying as both teams fought the flu. They jumped out to a 2-0 lead on goals by Owen MacDonald and Liam Foudy, but Erie bounced back and hemmed London in their own zone for much of the second period. They scored three straight and took a 3-2 lead. MacDonald tied the game in the third and overtime was waiting outside the door when Kyle Maksimovich spun around at the right point and flung a wrist shot at the London net. Dylan Strome got a stick on it and deflected it in with 40 seconds remaining and the Otters went on to a 5-3 victory.
The teams went to Erie on Feb. 15 and Erie held the Knights to 17 shots and won 5-1.
The road to Windsor and the MasterCard Memorial Cup in 2017 may very well go through at least one of these teams.
They play tonight and then they play their final game against each other during this regular season on Tuesday at the Erie Insurance Arena.
Without the template of a best-of-7, or a one-game winner-take-all, these two meetings in a span of five days are about as big as you can get.
The matchup
It’s a who’s who of recent NHL draft picks. Dylan Strome of Erie has already played games in the National Hockey League and in the coming years, he will have some company from both rosters.
Alex DeBrincat is as hot a goal scorer as anyone has been in the OHL for the past 29 years. He equaled former London Knight, Brian Dobbin’s mark of goals in 18 consecutive games last night by scoring his 61st of the season in Windsor.
Mike Ricci set the league record with goals in 19 straight games in 1988. The oldest people on the ice tonight were born in 1996. That’s how long that record has stood.
You don’t shut down DeBrincat. The key is to limit him.
The Knights were the team that stopped Jeremy Bracco’s 26-game point streak earlier this year. If they could play streak buster again, they would be a step closer to where they want to be at the end of the night.
Along with DeBrincat, the Otters have a high-powered offense that feasts on turnovers and mistakes. You can’t turn the puck over and you can’t make mistakes. They don’t miss very often on those opportunities.
Erie’s issue in the past two weeks has been in goal.
They can put up 40-60 shots in a game, but Troy Timpano and Joseph Murdaca have allowed 16 goals in the past three games.
The Barrie Colts are in last place and they have only allowed 12 in their past three.
The Otters can outscore you, but lately, if you get pucks to their net, they do go in.
With the exception of the first 39 minutes of last Friday’s game in Kitchener and Saturday in Windsor, the Knights have been putting up some good offensive numbers. They are dangerous.
Having Tyler Parsons back in goal gives London elite goaltending. In the playoffs, it’s much more common to have to win a game 3-2 in overtime (see the final game of last year), than it is 7-6 in regulation.
The Knights have put a focus on special teams and on getting pucks deep against teams like Erie and really getting a game going along the boards. London has the ability to score goals that bring you out of your seats, but sometimes it’s the ones you see banked off skates and backs and whacked in off rebounds that have an even bigger impact.
Those are the kinds of goals you tend to have to work for against Erie when their players are limiting you from moving pucks through seams and making plays off the rush.
One more story
As Alex DeBrincat of the Otters looks for a goal in his 19th consecutive game, former London Knight forward, Brian Dobbin will be watching. Right now he and DeBrincat are tied for the second-longest goal scoring streak.
Dobbin admits that things were a little different when he played. There was no running total on how many games he had scored in. In fact, even after it ended, he had no idea that he had gone 18 straight.
About a month later, the Knights’ head coach in 84-85, Don Boyd, came to Dobbin with a plaque from the league recognizing his accomplishment.
DeBrincat has been featured nationally.
How times have changed.
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