Generals capture Mem. Cup
MEMORIAL CUP: Oshawa 2, Kelowna 1 (OT)
QUEBEC CITY — Twenty-five years ago, the Oshawa Generals won a Memorial Cup title in double overtime at Hamilton.
Anthony Cirelli wasn’t waiting that long.
In the last game of a 66-yearold Pepsi Colisee that didn’t seem to want to say good-bye, the 17- year- old rookie centre from Woodbridge banged home a rebound 1:28 into the first overtime for a 2-1 victory over the Kelowna Rockets before 10,391 Sunday night in the Cup final.
Cirelli scored both of his team’s goals. He had two in the OHL playoffs.
For Oshawa, it ends a 25-year Cup drought, won in front of a partisan Generals crowd that travelled to Quebec for the weekend.
Big Oshawa forward Hunter Smith went for the home run swing with 2:30 left in the third, battling an air-borne puck into the Rockets net.
It was disallowed, after lengthy review, on a high stick.
You could tell the way Lambert talked about Oshawa’s defence all week, he considered it the ultimate puzzle for his team to solve.
In the end, they were able to generate enough chances to win.
But Kenny Appleby, the thirdyear General and first-year starting goalie, stopped early-season Edmonton Oiler Leon Draisaitl and Gage Quinney on pointblank chances to keep the deficit at a single goal.
He stood up to two Nick Merkley shots on one sequence early in the third, then forced him wide on a breakaway with five minutes left.
The 20-year-old from North Bay saved his best saves for when his team needed it most.
And he wasn’t doing it against fourth-liners and defencemen. These shooters were the meat of Kelowna’s offence.
Oshawa’s power play struggled all tournament, performing the worst of the four teams that made it to Quebec.
They had back-to-back secondperiod chances on infractions to Joe Gatenby and Merkley. They buzzed all around Kelowna goalie Jackson Whistle but couldn’t score.
The Generals’ motor needed a boost. They got it from Cirelli, who found some room and picked the top corner over Whistle’s glove to tie the game.
Kelowna, who consider them- selves notorious slow starters, stunned Oshawa by opening the scoring at the 15-minute mark.
It was the first time in four Cup games the Generals failed to record the first goal. Compounding their problems, Tomas Soustal’s tally came on an offen- sive zone faceoff.
That’s been an Oshawa specialty all spring. The Rockets were beating them at its own game.
The Generals nearly doubled their opponents’ shot totals in their three round-robin wins. Not this time. The Rockets dominated the shot clock. By the end of the second, they had 23, already surpassing their total for their first Oshawa meeting.
The most the Generals allowed in the round-robin was 25 against Quebec in a game that lasted nearly four periods.
Discipline has been one of Oshawa’s most effective calling cards since facing the Erie Otters in their league final.
Bradley Latour, bumped up back to first- line duty with Cole Cassels and Hunter Smith, nailed Kelowna’s 48-goal man Rourke dangerously in the neutral zone early in the game.
It should’ve been a boarding call, but the refs left it unpunished.
Aggressive Montreal firstrounder Michael McCarron, who went through the entire OHL final and first three Cup games without a minor penalty, was whistled for cross-checking in the final minute of the first.
In the semifinal blowout of the Remparts, Kelowna used a Draisaitl power-play goal 17 seconds into the second to spark the decisive period. That didn’t happen this time. This final was unfairly billed as a struggle between offence and defence.
The Rockets aren’t just a goalscoring bunch. They were one of the best defensive teams in junior hockey.
On the other side, the Generals can score. They have a 40- goal man in Michael Dal Colle, but they rarely blow anybody out.
“If we look at us all throughout the playoffs we scored a ton of timely goals late in periods,” Dal Colle said. Coming here, we won our three (round-robin) games by one goal.”