Surprising 67’s upset powerful Oshawa team despite injured captain
As the final days approach in the Ottawa 67’s remarkable turnaround season, a lot of time has been spent analyzing the schedules of the North Bay Battalion, who the 67’s would like to catch, and the Niagara IceDogs, who they’d like to stay ahead of.
The 67’s have long had their stretch run memorized, and they try to imagine which games they should win and how many wins it might take to grab third place in the Ontario Hockey League’s Eastern Conference. Or even how many it might take to hold off hard-charging Niagara for fourth to keep, at least, home-ice advantage in the opening round.
But not even the most optimistic 67 could have pencilled in a win against the No. 1-ranked team in the Canadian Hockey League for 12 consecutive weeks, dating back to early December.
With their best player and leader, Travis Konecny, seated high in Section 15 with an “upper-body” injury, the 67’s shocked even themselves and absolutely stunned a crowd of 3,774 at TD Place Friday night, upsetting the high-flying Oshawa Generals despite being outshot 32-17.
All it took was a pair of powerplay goals by Dante Salituro and a 31-save performance from Liam Herbst to turn back the Generals, who lose about once a month.
That and a whole lot of nail-biting while watching the clock count down ever so slowly.
After all, the 67’s were within 39.2 seconds last week of upsetting the London Knights but couldn’t close.
“Somehow we came together as a group and everyone chipped in,” said Herbst. “Sally got us a couple, and I got in the way of a couple of shots at the back end.”
Before the game, 67’s coach Jeff Brown had lamented the fact the 67’s had not been playing their best hockey recently, and that they only had a couple of weeks to make corrections before the playoffs.
“We’ve got to get back to doing what we do best by playoff time,” Brown said. “It’s that simple because there will be no easy opponent for us no matter where we finish.”
Well, somewhere between a pregame meeting and the 7:30 puck drop the 67’s found a way to turn back the Generals, who lost for only the 10th time in 63 games and only the seventh time in 32 road games.
The league’s eighth-best power-play unit provided the offence needed to upset the Generals. Salituro’s first of the night, his 36th on the season, came on a four-minute advantage in the first after Oshawa’s Bradley Latour had rammed Salituro into the end boards 4:35 in.
Just 55 seconds later, it was 1-0 for the 67’s.
“(The hit) was a little bit of a wake-up call,” said Salituro. “We had our ups and downs in this one but we picked things up in the third. This has to give us confidence. We need, like, four of our last five to secure home-ice so this one is huge.”
Salituro continued to hold the hot hand when he scored a second power-play marker 5:34 into the second.
That two-goal lead stood until a goal by Ottawa Senators draft pick Tobias Lindberg with just 37.2 seconds remaining in the second.
“We stole one,” Brown said. “There wasn’t a lot of good things to take out of the first two periods. At the same time, we had some tremendous efforts. All I could tell our guys is we have 20 guys, too, so let’s see if we can close it.”
The 67’s also found out Friday that captain Konecny is on schedule to be healthy in time for Game 1 of the East quarter-final, likely Friday, March 27 or Saturday, March 28. Konecny, who was injured last Sunday in Mississauga after talking a hit along the boards, is following the doctor’s orders and will work on his own rehabbing his “upperbody” injury.