The Blades played a rare Tuesday night home game on March 22 against their number one rivals, the Burlington Cougars.
The Blades needed points in this game because they currently only hold a one-point lead in the West division for the final playoff.
The Blades last played Burlington on Saturday and nearly completed a big comeback but came up just short, losing 5-3.
Both teams traded chances throughout the first 15 minutes, and Oakville missed some grade-A scoring chances they couldn’t capitalize on.
Those missed opportunities came back to haunt them when Josh Belgrave took advantage of an unfortunate bounce and put the puck in the open net to make the game 1-0 Burlington.
The Cougars took that one-goal lead into the locker room for the first intermission.
Just over a minute into the second period, Callum Arnot broke up the ice and fed Evan Pringle a gorgeous pass that Pringle one-timed into the back of the net to tie the game at 1-1.
Three minutes later, Pringle struck again after he tipped a Jacob Crisp shot past Burlington goaltender Kyle Metson to give the Blades a 2-1 lead.
The Blades tried to hold on to that lead, but with less than five minutes in the period, Jack Richard snipped a shot top corner for the Cougars and tied the game at 2-2.
Both teams traded chances for the rest of the period, but the second frame ended with a 2-2 stalemate.
The third period started off great for the Blades; Zach Wigle entered the zone and sent a great pass right on the stick of Josh Kudo, who tapped the puck in, giving the Blades a 3-2 lead.
Oakville kept trying and trying to hold on and get a crucial two points in the standings.
Unfortunately, Oakville could not hold the fort, and Matt Franzoi squeaked a backhand through the legs of the Oakville goalie to tie the game at 3-3.
At this point, even one point would help the Blades. If they could just hold on and get the game to overtime, the Blades would still pick up a big point in the standings.
But the Blades could not do that as the team left Bailey Kirwin wide open in the slot, and he scored on his rebound to give the Cougars a 4-3 lead.
The Blades needed another goal to push the game to overtime, and though it was a tall ask, the team could get another goal before the end of regulation.
The team had multiple chances and wide-open opportunities, but they could not cash in another goal and force overtime.
The Blades dropped the game 4-3 and missed another chance to pick up points in the standings.
After the game, Evan Pringle talked about what the Blades needed to do to shut the game down in the third, saying, “We need to stick to our game plan. I think we had a really good effort, but for a five-minute span, we had a little bit of a mental breakdown, and they ended up in the back of our net.”
He continued to say, "I think we need to stay focused for a full 60 minutes and try to shut those breakdowns out of our game."