67's drop second straight exhibition game

After a two week hiatus, the Ottawa 67’s were back on the ice at TD Place tonight. Unfortunately, it was apparent they haven’t had real game action for at least two weeks.

The 67’s forced overtime late in the game, but fell 5-4 to the Kingston Frontenacs in the shootout. They now sit with a pre-season record of 0-1-0-1 with the final pre-season game scheduled in Kingston on Saturday night.

Missing in action were regular such as Travis Konecny, Dante Salituro, Liam Herbst and Jake Middleton for Ottawa and Lawson Crouse, Roland McKeown, Spencer Watson and Lucas Peressini for Kingston. With many players away at NHL training camps, it was a good opportunity for both squads to evaluate their rookies. It was the rookies who stood out more capturing 11 of the 18 points during the game.

 
It was Frontenacs’ rookie Ryan Cranford who opened the scoring and it was Frontenacs’ rookie Jason Robertson who scored the lone shootout goal to secure the victory.

67’s rookie Connor Warnholtz scored his first goal of the pre-season and his OHL career while Artur Tyanulin picked up his second. As the only veteran on the blue line, Evan de Haan stepped in offensively tallying 2 goals in less than 30 seconds. But that was as good as it got.

While there were some solid plays made by the 67’s, coach Jeff Brown was not impressed.

“That was Kingston’s first game, it was our second game,” Brown explained. “We looked like the team that hadn’t played before. It’s a very disappointing night. (I’m) not happy at all.”

With the regular season looming around the corner and 26 players still on the roster, cuts need to be made. Tonight’s game did not make it any easier on the coaching staff.

“No decision has been made tonight,” said Brown regarding cuts. “If there was just one of two (bad players), it would make our job easy. But when they are all awful, it’s tough to decipher who was even worse.”

Cuts are expected to be made before the season starts. They could be as early as Sunday but the coaching staff hopes to have it figured out by Tuesday. 

The 67’s have one final game in Kingston on Satruday night before kicking off the regular season on September 24^th in Peterborough.

Game summary here.