Knights Skin Otters in Tough Victory

MAN, what a crazy game! A little bit of everything was in store last night for us Knights fans as the London Knights played against the Erie Otters at the John Labatt Centre. First off, the Knights first goal came NINE SECONDS after the first face-off! Seth Griffith got the goal and the Knights were ahead 1-0. At the 7 minute mark of the 1st period, Jared Knight put London up by two with a goal of his own and it looked as though the Knights were going to blow the contest wide open. The Otters, however were scrappy right to the end and wouldn't go away. After team captain Jarred Tinordi received a penalty for checking an Otter to the head, Erie got their first goal of the game at the 13:41 mark of the 1st. Conner Brown scored to make it 2-1. In the 2nd period, Erie continued their comeback with 2 more goals to take the lead, 3-2. The goals were scored by Sondre Olden and Chris Marchese. It seemed as though the Knights had blown it: the Otters were storming Michael Houser with scoring chances and the team looked less energized than they had been early on in the 1st period. The Knights however were not out: at 9:45 of the 2nd, the goals and the energy came back. Vladislav Namestnikov scored at that point to tie it 3-3 and the team still had 2 more goals to go in that period. Seth Griffith scored his 2nd goal of the game and Bo Horvat helped out at well. This made the score 5-3 in favour of the Knights. The entire game was like this: a giant tug-of-war between the teams, the AM 1290 CJBK radio commentators remarked. Those men were Mike Stubbs (play-by-play) and Jim Van Horne (analyst). Erie still had one more burst of firepower left however. Marchese scored his second goal of the game at 9:08 of the 3rd period to make the score 5-4 and it didn't look good for the Knights as Erie seemed to again have more life in their steps. However, Namestnikov ended the party with HIS 2nd goal of the night to end it at 6-4. That was at 19:28 of the 3rd. The game even included fighting: Erie's Johnny McGuire and London's Jared Tinordi both went off at 16:07 of the 1st period for scrapping with each other. Another fight happened in the 3rd period as Matt Rupert of the Knights and Brett Cook of the Otters both went off at 11:38 for the encounter. To make a tight game even tighter, the final shots on goal count was London 43, Erie 41! With this wild win, London is now 7-1 on the year and await the Guelph Storm who come into the JLC tonight at 7 PM. Here's the game recap. That's all for now. Take care everybody.