67's come up short in 3-2 loss against the Battalion

After gutting out a 4-3 overtime win against the North Bay Battalion just 6 days ago, the Ottawa 67’s tried to repeat their winning ways against the Battalion again in a special afternoon matinee that had a high impact in the Eastern Conference standings.

But the Battalion had their own plan. Mike Amadio, who has been on fire recently, scored a pair of goals to lead his team to a 3-2 regulation victory sending 4,559 Ottawa fans home disappointed.

The 67’s found themselves down 2-0 after the first period where the Battalion capitalized on their two power play opportunities.

“We actually started pretty good and then we took a really selfish penalty in the offensive zone, they score on the power play,” said a disappointed Jeff Brown. “(We take) another penalty, they score on the power play.”

After Steve Harland converted on the first power play, Jeremiah Addison was sent to the dressing room. That was midway through the first period and he never returned to the bench. Mike Amadio added another power play goal just four minutes later.

When asked about what happened to Addison, Brown replied, “It’s between Addy and I.”

Stepan Falkovsky got the 67’s on the board on a power play of their own midway through the second period. Dante Salituro picked up an assist on Falkovsky’s goal to extend his point streak to 13 games (with 7 goals and 12 assists in that time frame).

Amadio restored the Battalion’s 2-goal lead with his second goal and the eventual game winner late in the second period. He was left all alone in the slot. Amadio, the LA Kings prospect, scored 5 goals against the Kingston Frontenacs on Saturday night and clearly didn’t have any intention on slowing down today.

“You know, Amadio is a pretty good player,” said 67’s head coach Jeff Brown. “It seemed like we left the best player alone quite a bit out there.”

The 67’s tightened things up in the third and played with more desperation. Artur Tyanulin was rewarded with his 10^th goal of the season off a great effort from Ben Fanjoy. Battalion netminder Jake Smith failed to corral a rebound and the 67’s got within 1.

With the goaltender pulled, the 67’s fired everything they could at Smith, but they couldn’t connect. Evan de Haan saved an empty net goal with a huge stick poke allowing the 67’s to battle until the final moments. Falkovsky joined the rush in the dying seconds, but broke his stick on the final shot as it went wide.

“It wasn’t a very good first and second, but we battled in the third,” said Brown. “If we would have battled and played with desperation like that for 60 minutes, we’d be in a lot better position right now.”

The win gives North Bay sole possession of third place in the Eastern Conference with Niagara, Ottawa and Mississauga tied for fourth and only trailing by 2 points. The 67’s have another big test coming up on Friday where they will host the first place Kingston Frontenacs.

Game summary here.