ONE STEP BACK
67’s trail again after loss
It’s the old sports cliché — one game at a time.
After falling 2-1 to the Mississauga Steelheads on Tuesday night at The Arena at TD Place, the Ottawa 67’s can’t worry about anything beyond Game 4 of the series on Thursday, again at home.
The Eastern Conference’s seventh-ranked 67’s now trail 2-1 in the best-of-seven series against the second-ranked Steelheads, who showed in the regular season they can generate plenty of offence.
“We told (the players), ‘It’s going to be a long playoff series,’ ” said 67’s coach Jeff Brown. “This is one game. We have to come with an effort in Game 4, win, and it’s down to best-of-three.
“We’ll lick our wounds tonight, but get your head up and get back to work because this thing is far from over.”
Coming off an impressive 4-0 win in Game 2 in Mississauga, the 67’s were good in their own end most of the night, but struggled to generate quality scoring chances against Steelheads rookie goalie Jacob Ingham, again starting for Matthew Mancina, still out with a lowerbody injury.
“We’re disappointed with the result,” Brown said. “I thought a lot of guys played real hard, not as hard as in Game 2, and that’s the difference. That’s a really good hockey club and we have to bring our best if we expect to win. We just weren’t quite there tonight.
“It’s one goal, it’s playoff hockey. You win some, you lose some. We could easily have won that game. We score one five-on-three goal and that was really all the offence we created, which was disappointing. That’s back-toback here at home; the last game here wasn’t very good offensively. We have to find a way to generate more five-on-five.”
With several younger players in the lineup, especially on defence, the 67’s hung in there with the older Steelheads.
“There are breakdowns, but that’s junior hockey — it doesn’t matter if they’re 16 or 21,” Brown said. “I’m really happy with the young guys — they’re 16 years old and holding their own playing a lot of minutes, playing arguably the best team in the East.”
The first period was scoreless, despite a 67’s flurry late in the period.
Mississauga opened the scoring 10 seconds into the second frame when Michael McLeod beat 67’s goalie Leo Lazarev.
The Steelheads got into penalty trouble near the six-minute mark, with Watson taking a holding penalty and Stefan LeBlanc sent off for slashing 30 seconds apart. Ottawa cashed in on a three-way passing play with Artur Tyanulin and Austen Keating combining to set up Noel Hoefenmayer, who blasted a slap shot past Ingham.
Mississauga took a 2-1 lead with the man advantage at 13:46 of the second — after Trent Fox missed an open net, Jacob Cascagnette beat Lazarev with a wrist shot.
With 8:50 left in the game, Lazarev kept his team within a goal with a nice glove save.
Speaking about Lazarev, Brown said: “Game 2, he was lights out. Tonight, the first one, he didn’t have a chance. The second one he’d like to have back, but the two defencemen backed right up on him. But it’s one goal — one goal shouldn’t beat you.”
A questionable high-sticking penalty to Ottawa’s David Pearce with 5:34 left put the Steelheads on the power play. But Mississauga, with some sloppy play, couldn’t capitalize.
Asked about the penalty call, which if anything could have been a dubious cross-checking call, Brown said: “What do you say? Playoff game, I don’t understand — five minutes to go, the team that’s down ... I thought the guys did a great job up until then. They let us play, there were some calls they let go. Then, out of the blue, we get a phantom high stick. With five minutes to go, that’s a tough call. There’s two minutes we don’t have to try and get back in the game. That’s not why we lost. It’s just frustrating sometimes. You don’t always get the calls.”
Game 4 of the series is Thursday night at TD Place. Game 5 is Friday in Mississauga with Game 6, if necessary, Sunday in Ottawa.