DOGS GONE: Kingston edges Hamilton in 3-2 OT win
KINGSTON 3, HAMILTON 2 (OT)
KINGSTON — An hour and a half before Tuesday’s game, while his teammates were booting around a soccer ball, Niki Petti broke away from the group and walked over to the top of the corner stands. He took a long look at the barn in Kingston. Fidgeted his hands.
“I wasn’t thinking it was my last game, but the thought is always running through your head — this could be the last one, so embrace everything and remember it for as long as you can,” he said.
Nearly five years ago, Petti played his first OHL game at the K Rock Centre.
On Tuesday, he played his last. “I have no emotion,” he said. “It doesn’t seem real.”
After coming from behind to force Game 7, Petti’s Hamilton Bulldogs gave up a two-goal lead to allow the Kingston Frontenacs to take their first round playoff series in overtime 3-2. Finnish rookie Linus Nyman scored the tying goal and the OT winner.
“I’m just so proud of our team,” said Frontenacs head coach Paul McFarland. “Our guys deserved it.”
The Frontenacs had the first good chance of the game when the puck popped out to the near circle where Stephen Desrocher was stationed with a clear view of an open net. Jack Hanley, however, slid across the crease to keep his shot out. Moments later, Petti found Matt Luff on a 2-on-1 the other way, but he rang the puck off the crossbar and out of play.
With about five minutes to go in the second, Luff got another opportunity when Ben Gleason fired a shot from the point that bounced off the backboards and onto his stick in the near circle. He buried it, and then, four minutes later, set up Michael Cramarossa across the crease to double the lead.
Before the end of the frame (and just 18 seconds after Cramarossa’s goal), Kingston made it a one-goal game with Jason Robertson onetiming a Nyman feed from behind the net. Then, five minutes into the third, the Finn struck again, tying the game with a backhand from the goal line that snuck in over Dawson Carty’s glove.
In OT, Desrocher beat Connor Walters to the puck in the neutral zone. He wired it off the post and it bounced to Robertson, who found Nyman in the near circle.
“What a series,” said Bulldogs head coach John Gruden.
“It’s unfortunate that one of these hardworking teams has to be done, but that’s playoff hockey and I think my message is just for these guys back on this team to bottle it, understand it, feel it and be motivated.”