67’s shock Sting with rare home win
Club gets first home victory since mid-december
It’s not every month the Ottawa 67’s win a game on home ice, so the Winterlude celebrations began with quite an unexpected bang out in Kanata.
The 67’s did what they failed to do in all of January and that was win a game on home ice.
So February is already a good month after upsetting the heavily-favoured Sarnia Sting on a goal by defenceman Mike Vlajkov, his second of the game, with 1:17 remaining in front of a solid turnout of 6,786 at Scotiabank Place on Friday night.
The 67’s secret was simple: they went to the net and produced chances and the win was the first for the 67’s at the Bank since way back on Dec. 14, a slide of six home losses in succession.
And the contest marked the first of seven in a row over 18 days at the not-so-friendly confines of Scotiabank Place for the 67’s, where they have still won a league-low five games but at least the streak reads one in a row.
The 67’s previous wins at home are easy to list: Sept. 29, Oct. 14, Nov. 20 and Dec. 14 with nothing to show for January in five home contests.
But this could be the start of something better. The 67’s might have played their best game at home since November.
The Ontario Hockey League’s top power-play unit, by percentage anyways, got the club on the board 9:24 in when defenceman Michal Cajkovsky blasted one from the point for his seventh goal of the season.
Cajkovsky, the 67’s lone overager this season, will not be around to see the rebuild continue. But that hasn’t stopped him from going out and playing every night, trying to earn an invite to an NHL camp next fall. The native of Bratislava, Slovakia, has already matched his career-high for points with 21.
John Urbanic, one of the trade deadline arrivals, made it 2-0 at 3:40, but in order for a team to shut down Sarnia, it has to shut down league-leading Reid Boucher and that is next to impossible.
The future New Jersey Devil counted his 41st goal of the year in just his 49th game to cut the lead to 2-1 at 14:20.
Sarnia’s Anthony DeAngelo tied it at 7:11 of the third only to have the 67’s come right back and regain the lead 45 seconds later on a blast by Vlajkov.
But it was Boucher again at 16:11 with Ottawa’s Dante Salituro in the box, setting the stage for Vlajkov’s winner.