After an early exit from the 2015 OHL playoffs, the Ottawa 67’s
experienced another long off-season. Almost 5 months to the day, the 67’s
finally returned to the ice to face the cross-river rival Gatineau Olympiques for
their first exhibition game of the new season.
The Olympiques ruined the 67’s home coming with a 5-2 win in
front of a sparse crowd of 1,612 on a warm Friday night.
As one may expect, the 67’s looked rusty coming out of the
gate and continued to struggle in many parts of the game.
“It was a learning experience for a lot of the young guys to
see what it’s like. I’m not going to read too much into the score. Individually,
there were some good things that I liked and some disappointing things, but that’s
standard,” said 67’s coach Jeff Brown.
With training camp only starting on Tuesday, the team has
not had a lot of time together. To put it in perspective, the Olympiques
training camp started August 10th with their first regular season
game starting in less than one week.
“We haven’t even had a practice yet. We had a morning skate
this morning and that was about it. We got a lot of work to do.”
The Olympiques drew first blood off their 4th
shot on net. Rookie defenseman Hudson Wilson had a defensive lapse allowing
Nashville Predators’ draft pick, Yakov Trenin to skate in at the side of a wide
open net.
Midway through the first frame, Artur Tyanulin responded for
the 67’s but it was Travis Konecny who did all of the work. Drafted by the
Philadephia Flyers this past June, Konecny has not missed a step. He used his dynamic speed to blow past the Olympiques
defender and find Tyanulin in the high slot.
Flashes of brilliance shot throughout both the 67’s and
Olympiques lineup, but the 67’s were inconsistent and often looked sloppy.
Sitting out of the lineup for the 67’s were veterans Jake Middleton, Evan de Haan,
Nathan Todd, Nevin Guy, Jeremiah Addison and Liam Herbst. This allowed the
coaching staff to see more rookies in real game action.
The Olympiques gained a two-goal lead in the second period
and the 67’s were never able to catch up. The game ended up getting away from
the home team 67’s late in the final frame as the Olympiques scored very easily
on two open nets.
Yakov Trenin ended up with 2 goals and 1 assist on the night
and was easily the Olympiques best player. Sam Studnicka was a physical presence
tonight with 6 hits and went 11/16 on the faceoff dot. Travis Konecny created
several scoring chances including one that led to a penalty shot where he just
rung the puck off the crossbar.
Despite the score of the game, coach Jeff Brown thought his
rookies played pretty well considering the circumstances.
“It’s hard to compete against them. They had an old line-up
on the ice.” He said, “You’re talking about 20 year olds against 16 year olds, it’s
a bit of an unfair fight.”
The 67’s have under 2 weeks off until their next pre-season
game which gives them plenty of time to regroup and fine tune their play.
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