2 weeks Ago By Jan Murphy
Headed into the weekend, the Kingston Frontenacs brass were looking to see how the first-place club matched up against some the league’s best. The results are in, and mixed. On Friday night, in what may have been the most entertaining hockey game of the season, Kingston went goal for goal and toe-to-toe with the mighty London Knights, eventually dropping a 5-4 shootout decision.
Two nights later, the results went the polar opposite, with the Fronts being outgunned by the Oshawa Generals in an ugly 8-5 loss that saw Kingston come unglued when it came to discipline. Beckett Sennecke scored four times, three on the power play, and had six points as the Generals took advantage of a rare bad night on special teams by the Frontenacs. Callum Ritchie added five assists for Oshawa, which pulled to within a point of Kingston for first place in the Eastern Conference.
Oshawa was an impressive 5-for-7 with the man advantage on Sunday and also scored four-on-four. “The penaly kill has been so good for us all year, but you can’t give a team with that much skill seven opportunities,” Kingston head coach Troy Mann said after Sunday’s loss. “I thought five on five, we were actually the better team.
” After Kingston opened the scoring on Cedrick Guindon’s 16 th of the season, the Generals quickly tied it. Maleek McGowan would restore Kingston’s lead before the Sennecke show began, with the Anaheim Ducks prospect tying the game late in the first. He’d put the Generals ahead on the power play five minutes into the second, before the wheels came off for Kingston.
Starting netminder Nolan Lalonde, returning to the lineup after missing more than a week due to illness, was assessed an unsportsmanlike penalty after complaining to the referee about what he and his teammates perceived as a non-call when Gage Heyes was blindsided by Ritchie, who was assessed only a minor on the play, which went without review. With the Generals on the ensuing 5-on-3, Sennecke struck again, ending Lalonde’s night. “The third goal wasn’t very good,” Mann said after.
“It’s a stoppable puck. Between him being upset with the non-five-minute call on Heyes, or just being frustrated with the goal, he put us down 5-on-3. At the end of the day, that’s the TSN turning point, as they say.
They score to make it 3-2, and then they get a 5-on-3 and make it 4-2. That was certainly for me the turning point of the game. It was 2-2 at that stage of that whole sequence.
” Lalonde was pulled and rookie Gavin Betts played the rest of the game, which didn’t get any prettier. Colby Barlow and Lauri Sinivuori also scored for the Generals, while Sennecke ended the night at 19 goals on the season. Jacob Battaglia, Guindon, with his second and Quinton Burns also scored for the Frontenacs, who came in feeling good about their game after an inspired effort against the Knights on Friday night.
“I think we’re right there with those teams,” Mann said following Sunday’s loss. “Certainly you’re not going to out-skill either team. I think both London and Oshawa have the most skill that we’ve seen so far, and if you look at all the lineups of the teams we haven’t played, they’re certainly the two powerhouses from a skill perspective.
” But the Frontenacs held their own five-on-five, “That’s certainly something positive to look to moving forward.” On Friday night, the Knights needed overtime, and then a shootout, to dispatch the Frontenacs and extend their winning streak to 17 in a row. Jacob Julien beat Mason Vaccari and Austin Elliott stopped Cedrick Guindon to seal it as the Knights won 5-4 in the skills-competition finish.
The finish lived up to the hype that saw two of the hottest teams in the Ontario Hockey League collide. The white-hot Knights escaped with the win in a drag-em-down, knock-em-out, back-and-forth affair that saw London lead three times and the Fronts lead once and the 4,300 plus fans treated to an excellent hockey game between first-place clubs. Tuomas Uronen brought the Kingston crowd to its feet with his game-tying goal with just 30 seconds left in regulation, forcing extra time.
Uronen’s shot off a faceoff win by Guindon with Vaccari on the bench for the extra attacker, eluded London goalie Elliott, tying the game at 4-4. Uronen’s second of the night came moments after Evan Van Gorp put the Knights ahead on an odd-man rush, beating Vaccari. Van Gorp and Blake Montgomery scored third-period markers as the Knights rallied after Kingston had gone ahead on an early third-period goal by Gage Heyes, who scored moments after Uronen tied it for Kingston.
Sam O’Reilly, with his seventh of the year, had put London ahead 2-1 5:40 into the second period on the power play. Cedrick Guindon, with his 15 th of the season, and Montgomery exchanged first-period goals. Kingston outshot London 40-22 on the night.
NOTES: The point against London on Friday night gave Kingston its best November record in franchise history. Its 10-2-0-1 run in November topped the previous best record of 10-3 in the 1989-90 season..
. Both London and Kingston entered Friday’s game on winning streaks. London came in having won 16 straight, its last loss coming six weeks ago.
The Frontenacs, meanwhile, came in on a three-game winning streak and having won 12 of its last 15 games. London also entered on 16 game road winning streak..
.. Kingston entered the game on a nine-game losing streak against the Knights and having won only one of its last 12 against London, a win that came back in September of 2017.
Its last home ice win over London happened on Feb. 29, 2016..
. Attendance was 4,311..
. Kingston goaltender Nolan Lalonde missed a third straight game due to illness..
. Toronto Maple Leafs prospect Easton Cowan missed his third straight game due to injury. Cowan is on a 54-game point streak dating back to last season and one game from tying Doug Gilmour’s record 55-game streak.
Gilmour’s streak was in the same season back in 1982-83. [email protected] x.
com/Jan_Murphy.
