London Knights hold off Oshawa Generals to take a 2-1 series lead in OHL Championship – London

The London Knights survived a wild third period and held off the Oshawa Generals to win Game 3 of the OHL Championship series with a 7-5 win on May 12 at the Tribute Communities centre.

London entered period three with a 5-1 lead only to have Oshawa get to within a goal with plenty of time remaining.

The Knights now own a two games to one series lead.

Kasper Halttunen recorded a hat trick and Easton Cowan had a pair of goals and an assist.

The Generals got the first six shots of the game in front of their home crowd but the Knights got the game’s first two goals.

A high flip by Oliver Bonk dropped down at the Oshawa blue line and Cowan stripped a puck away from Owen Griffin and then backhanded a shot past Jacob Oster to become London’s all-time franchise leader in playoff scoring with his 90th career point.

The goal came at the 7:59 mark of the opening period.

Just over three minutes later Evan Van Gorp tracked down a puck along the end boards and got it to Will Nicholl who fed Halttunen for a one-timer and Halttunen’s eighth goal of the post-season and a 2-0 Knights lead after 20 minutes.

Sam O’Reilly of London was hit hard by Beckett Sennecke of the Generals near the end of the first period.

The hit saw O’Reilly go to the dressing room. It saw Sennecke go to the penalty box and in a power play that carried over into the second period it saw London stretch their lead just 5 seconds in.

In a play that left all 6054 fans at the Tribute Communities Centre wondering what they had just seen Cowan brought the puck across the Oshawa blue line, jumped and spun in the air, landed and fed Halttunen for a slap shot that broke Halttunen’s stick but propelled the puck into the Generals net to give the Knights a 3-0 advantage.

Oshawa got on the board less than three minutes after that as an Owen Griffin deflection found the back of the London net on a Generals power play to make it 3-1.

With Oshawa on another man advantage Jacob Julien and Cowan broke out on a two-on-oh breakaway and Julien kept the puck and wristed it underneath Oster to give the Knights a 4-1 lead.

Halttunen completed the hat trick at 16:09 of the second with his tenth goal of the playoffs and London lead 5-1 at the end of the middle period.

It would have been hard for the best prognosticators on planet earth to predict.

Oshawa fought back with three goals to get to within one of the Knights in a span of five minutes and 33 seconds as Luca D’Amato, Colby Barlow and Luke Torrance all scored and the score sat 5-4 for London with 6:18 remaining in regulation.

With the Generals pressuring for the equalizer O’Reilly flipped the puck ahead to Jesse Nurmi and he skated across the Oshawa blue line and scored to make it 6-4 with 2:11 left.

With the Generals net empty Oshawa kept on pressing and got to within a goal a second time as Sennecke turned and backhanded a shot under the crossbar with 1:29 to go and it was 6-5.

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The Generals pulled the goaltender a second time but O’Reilly made a second play on a high flip that found Cowan and his second goal of the game went into an empty net to finish the scoring.

O’Reilly ended with two assists.

Oshawa outshot 36-27.

The Knights were 0-for-2 on the power play.

The Generals were 1-for-5.

Cowan new franchise leader in playoff points and OHL Player of the Week

Easton Cowan moved into a place by himself with three points in Game 3 giving him 92 career playoff points.

Cowan is now the Knights all-time franchise leader passing Robbie Schremp who recorded 90 total playoff points. Schremp had 89 with London from 2005 to 2006 and one point with the Mississauga IceDogs in 2004.

Cowan is currently second overall in OHL playoff scoring this year with 12 goals and 23 assists and leads all other players in post-season in 2025.

His five-point performance in Game 2 saw Cowan named OHL Player of the Week.

Knights forward Noah Read won Rookie of the Week honours and London goalie Austin Elliott was named OHL Goaltender of the Week.

Up next

London and Oshawa will go back at it on back-to-back days when they play Game 4 of the OHL Championship on Tuesday, March 13 at 7 p.m., at the Tribute Communities Centre.

Game 5 will be Thursday, May 15 at 7 p.m., at Canada Life Place. There are tickets available at http://www.londonknights.com.

Coverage will begin at 6:30 p.m., on 980 CFPL at 980cfpl.ca and on the iHeart Radio and Radioplayer Canada apps.

 

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