It took 65 minutes of play and 30 shooters to find a winner.
In the end, it was a shootout goal by Gavin Ewles that gave the Ottawa 67’s a 2-1 Ontario Hockey League win over the Soo Greyhounds on Friday night at the GFL Memorial Gardens.
The second shooter in round 15 of the shootout, Ewles skated in on Greyhounds goaltender Charlie Schenkel, beating the Sault netminder high stick side to give the 67’s the win.
The shootout winner came after Ottawa tied the game with 1:43 to go in regulation time to force extra time.
For the Greyhounds, it was a game of positives and negatives.
“The one thing that’s sticking in my mind is we made a huge mistake on the game-tying goal against,” Greyhounds coach John Dean said. “We had older guys on the ice not playing hard enough quite honestly.”
“At the end of the day, those guys have to seal the deal at the end,” Dean added.
Dean added that, while there’s room for improvement, there were also some positives to take from the game.
“We just played the number one team in the league and stuck with them for 60,” Dean said. “We had some ups and downs, but it was another gritty performance.”
Ottawa coach Dave Cameron credited the play of the Greyhounds in the game.
“They did a good job getting back above us,” Cameron said. “They clogged up the neutral zone. Their goalie was really good. They got a hell of a goal where they drove to the net. We found a way to tie it up and the shootout is a crapshoot.”
Asked if he had ever seen a 15-round shootout before, Cameron said “not in this league.”
The veteran bench boss added that his previous experience with a similar shootout was in the Colonial Hockey League back in the mid-90s.
Dean added he’s never been a part of a shootout that long.
For the 67’s, who start the year off with eight consecutive wins, the start to the year has seen the team win in plenty of ways.
“When you’re on a winning streak, you have to find different ways,” Cameron said. “Our goaltenders have been good. Our special teams have been good and we’ve been real resilient.
For the Greyhounds, the start to the game wasn’t an easy one.
Dean called the team “lucky” to get out of the first period scoreless.
“The beginning of the second (was) probably a little more of the same,” Dean added. “All of a sudden, we started bringing our game. The last 15 minutes of the second, we were fantastic.”
Dean went on to say the solid play continued into the third period before it appeared they were “holding on a little bit.”
After going scoreless through two periods, the Greyhounds opened the scoring at 5:52 of the third as Bryce McConnell-Barker went to the net and scored on a rebound after Ottawa goaltender Collin MacKenzie stopped Greyhounds forward Kalvyn Watson on a redirection in tight.
The Greyhounds continued to lead into the final minutes of regulation when overage forward Cameron Tolnai tied the game for Ottawa.
With MacKenzie on the bench for an extra attacker, Tolnai was in the slot and deflected a point shot from Henry Mews past Schenkel to force overtime and set the stage for the lengthy shootout.
Schenkel stopped 33 shots for the Greyhounds before making saves on 14 of Ottawa’s 15 shootout attempts.
“Charlie was fantastic,” Dean said
MacKenzie made 26 saves for Ottawa before stopping all 15 Greyhounds shooters in the shootout.
“Mac had a tough year last year in terms of injuries,” Cameron said. “Then you throw in the COVID year and he hasn’t played much in a long while. He was really good (tonight).”
With the remainder of the weekend off, the Greyhounds return to action next Friday night as the team opens a road trip at the Memorial Centre in Peterborough against the Petes. The trip will also take the team to Kingston the following night before wrapping up the weekend on Sunday afternoon in Ottawa.
Veteran forward Tyler Savard will return to the Greyhounds lineup for the game in Peterborough after serving the final game of his four-game suspension against Ottawa on Friday night.