The Mississauga Chargers and Oakville Blades took to battle for the second meeting of the season between the two neighbouring clubs. Both teams have struggled mightily this season, as the Chargers sit last in the South Division with only four victories this season while Oakville is coming off of painful 8-1 and 6-1's losses earlier this week. The Chargers were desperate in the third period with a late attack despite scoring the first goal of the contest, but it didn't matter as Oakville took home the 2-1 victory.
The first period didn't feature a whole lot of action to start off the game. The shots after the first twenty were 12-5 for the Blades, who have a reputation of not not taking many shots early, however neither team managed to create much in terms of decent scoring opportunities. Both teams did a good job restricting shots out far from the net, allowing both goalies an easy first period of action.
The second period started off terribly for the Blades. Only fifteen seconds into the frame, Chargers star Vince Figliomeni continued his strong season by scoring his 16th goal in 27 games this season, giving the visitors the 1-0 lead on just their sixth shot. Oakville had their best chance to tie the game up just three minutes later when Ross Sloan sent the disk to a streaking Sean Perichak on a 2-on-0 but the alternate captain didn't get a good handle on the shot and couldn't put it home.
Shortly after, Sean Kohler took a great shot following a pass from Daniel Jelic on the point but Chargers goalie Austin Washkurak stood tall making a great toe save. The Oakville native made an identical pad save on the very next play when Perichak, once again, received a great pass in front from Sloan but got the same results from earlier. Washkurak continued his incredible period when he made easily one of the saves of the season so far the next time Sloan's line hit the ice, making a diving paddle stop on Koheler to hold on to the shutout for the time being. Unfortunately for the Chargers netminder, the Blades were eventually going to figure out how to get one past him. After making yet another impressive stop on the snake bitten Perichak, Kris Bennett finally was able to get one under the glove of Washkurak after a great pass from the hard working Keigan Goetz.
Sloan had many good chance to score during the second period but left for the dressing room empty handed. That wasn't the case during the third period, as the former Charger got one past his former team only two minutes into the last third of the contest. Looking to add another marker, Perichak had another fantastic chance when he went in all alone on Washkurak but his bad luck continued as he just missed the net on a deke.
Easily one of Oakville's hardest working players, Goetz played a fast, physical contest but eventually paid the price when he got ejected for head contact halfway through the period. Considering the fact that two two combatants are division rivals, there was a surprisingly low amount of physicality throughout the game, but Oakville did take a couple of late penalties that didn't amount to much from the opposing power-play. With the Chargers unable to get anything done on the late five on three it looked as though Oakville had it in the books, and that was exactly the case as Oakville skated to a a strong 2-1 victory.
Don't miss out on Oakville next home game, taking place on Saturday, November 23rd against the Wellington Dukes at Sixteen Mile Sports Complex. The puck drop is set for 7:30pm, so we hope to see you all there!