GUELPH, Ont. – Winning the Queen's Cup is the goal for every player in OUA men's hockey. But doing so in triple overtime in front of a sold out home crowd is the type of things dreams are made of. Second-year forward
Ted Nichol scored 1:14 into the third overtime period Saturday night in Guelph to lift the Gryphons past the Ottawa Gee-Gees in the 109th edition of the Queen's Cup. The OUA championship game was played in a packed Gryphon Centre Arena, where a capacity crowd of 1,600 looked on as the Gryphons hoisted the OUA championship trophy for the seventh time in program history. Gryphon forward
Marc Stevens opened the scoring 1:39 into the second period, only to see the visiting Gee-Gees respond :21 seconds later. The score would remain locked at 1-1 until early in the third overtime, when Nichol sent the Gryphon Centre into a frenzy with his overtime heroics, ending the longest edition ever played in the 109-year history of the Queen's Cup.
"I pretty much blacked out, but I knew Vally (Ryan Valentini) loves to try to suck the defence in, so I was just ready for him to give it to me," said Nichol, a native of Listowel, Ontario now in his second season as a Gryphon.
"So I just tried to get the shot off as quick as I could, and it found the back of the net. It's crazy."
In the true nature of playoff hockey, nothing was going to come easy for either side during the contest. Playing over 41 minutes of extra hockey, there were glorious chances in all three overtime sessions for both the Gryphons and the Gee-Gees, but neither team would give in.
Gryphon's forward
Zachary Poirier had a pair of tremendous chances in the first OT period, including a partial breakaway, however, Ottawa goalie Domenic Graham came up with big save after big save.
Not to be outdone, Gryphon's netminder
Andrew Masters quickly became the story of double overtime. With the homeside being outshot 12-3 in the period, Masters simply would not be denied a Queen's Cup championship. Turning aside two different Ottawa breakaways, Guelph's goalie made sure to give the Gryphons as much time as they needed to secure the biggest victory in the program since March 7, 2015.
"We bent, but we didn't break in that the second overtime," said Gryphon's head coach
Shawn Camp. "Our defensive core was able to hold the fort long enough for us, and then we got great goaltending on top of that, and that is the kind of goaltending we need to have a chance to win at nationals."
Speaking of the Gryphon's goalie, Masters was named the Player of the Game for his tremendous performance in the 109th Queen's Cup. The Kitchener native turned away 50 of the 51 shots sent his way to help the Gryphons capture their second OUA title in the last six seasons. "I've been trying to chase one of these since I was 11 years old, and there's no other group of brothers, no other program, no other staff I'd rather do it for than this one right here," said Masters. "After last year (losing in Queen's Cup) it almost felt like a sense of destiny that we were going to win this thing. This crowd was unbelievable tonight. We could hear them every step of the way and it just means so much more when so many people that you care about are in the crowd."
Finding themselves hemmed in their own zone for a good portion of the second overtime period, Coach Camp says it was a pretty simple message to his team heading into what wound up being the final period of the game.
"We regrouped after that overtime because we were on our heels a little bit," he said. "All we told them was that we had to tighten things up a little bit. There were no major changes required, and it worked out well for us."
Both the Gryphons and Gee-Gees will now move on to the national stage and will head to Atlantic Canada for the 2020 University Cup. The eight-team tournament will take place March 12-15 in Halifax, where the Gryphons will pursue the second national title in program history (1996-97).
"We're just so excited for the guys," Camp said after seeing Nichol's shot hit the back of the net. "They have gone through a lot of adversity this season and to see them be rewarded after coming up just short in the Queen's Cup last year, it was really important for us. The guys were great tonight."
