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Are you
ready for 1 more!!!
The Brampton Excelsior's traveled to Peterborough
for the last time this season on Tuesday night.
Down 3 games to 2 in the best of 7 MSL finals, the
Excelsior's knew they had little room for error
if they were going to force a seventh and final
game back in Brampton.
This time around it was Peterborough
that grabbed the first goal over seven minutes into
the game. Jeff Shattler would be at the end of a
nice passing display to find himself alone out front
to tie the game up a minute later, but would respond
on their next possession to regain the lead. Brampton
would kick it into high gear after that with Blaine
Manning coming all the way around from the right
side and burying one past O'Toole, and then doing
the exact same thing minutes later to get Brampton
in front. With 4 minutes to go Colin Doyle would
take a nice feed from Josh Sanderson and make no
mistake, and then Aaron Wilson would take a flip
pass from Dan Dawson to extend the lead to 3. The
end of the period saw Cam Woods break-up a last
minute play and fire the ball the length of the
floor, but the ball struck the pipe as the clock
expired.
Peterborough would score 90 seconds
into the second period to let the Excelsior's know
that they weren't going away. They scored another
5 minutes into the frame and were soon rewarded
with the first power-play of the night. The Excelsior
penalty killers did their jobs, and with less than
9 minutes to go Blaine Manning completed his hat-trick
on a pick and roll play with Aaron Wilson. Colin
Doyle started the play and in doing so recorded
his 1100th career point. With the teams playing
4 on 4 Dan Dawson potted one to regain the three
goal lead. Despite making some huge saves, the Lakers
battled back and netted 3 goals in the last 5 minutes
to knot the teams at 7 at the end of the second.
Brampton got called for too many
men just seconds into the final frame but were once
again successful in killing it off, then 4 and a
half minutes in, a Laker shot hit the post and Phil
Sanderson took off down the floor. The lone Peterborough
defender chose to cover Blaine Manning and let Sanderson
go in alone where he blasted one home. 30 seconds
later, it was Jeff Shattler that was streaking in
alone and he extended the Brampton lead with his
100th career goal. At the midway point Mike Hominuck
rattled one off of all three posts, but on his next
shift made no mistake and regained the three goal
lead for Brampton. The Excelsiors had to kill off
yet another Peterborough power-play with 5 minutes
to go in the game and after the kill were finally
awarded one of their own. Paul Dawson would add
an empty net goal on the power-play and the final
score would be 11-7.
Game 7 goes off in Brampton on Thursday
night with an 8:00 start. The Excelsior's hope to
maintain their focus so that they can break the
current home-floor dis-advantage that this series
seems to have taken, and return to the way that
they played in game 1 of this series at the Powerade
Centre. So the stage is set for the final battle
in the war that is the 2008 MSL finals.
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