Gare Joyce

Gare Joyce writes regularly on junior hockey for Sportsnet.ca. A veteran journalist, Joyce is the author of Future Greats and Heartbreaks: A Year Undercover in the Secret World of NHL Scouts, When the Lights Went Out: How One Brawl Ended Hockey's Cold War and Changed the Game and Sidney Crosby: Taking the Game by Storm. He also writes for ESPN The Magazine, espn.com and several Canadian magazines.

Even though he didn’t show up on the scoresheet, John Tavares was the most dangerous player on the ice in London’s opener Wednesday against Windsor.

WINDSOR -- Overall, the London Knights were the better team for 50 minutes. The London Knights were the better team five on five. The best three players on the ice were London Knights: John Tavares and Nazem Kadri up front and John Carlson on the backline. These three and their teammates sucked the air out of the WFCU for most of the evening.

Oh, I have to add, the Windsor Spitfires won the opening game of the Western Conference final 4-3 at 4:30 in overtime. Slap shot from the point by defenceman Ryan Ellis, a carom here, a tip there, a red light, cheers, blameless Knights goaltender Trevor Cann’s hanging head and London’s driver firing the bus up for the silent ride home.

It was Ellis’s second goal of the game. All four came on Windsor’s power play and if you’re going to get four goals on six power-play chances, well, that cures a lot of ills.

It was a coulda/shoulda/had it/got away night for the visiting Knights.

The Spitfires might have suspected as much. Windsor coach Bob Boughner thought his team had a case of shpilkis before the game -- not in the hours leading up to game time so much as in the moments immediately before leaving the dressing room. A conference final is just another year to the Knights but it’s uncharted territory for most of the Spitfires.

London coach Dale Hunter drew a game up on the chalkboard and his players brought it to life. The Spitfires have been ringing up prodigious shots totals throughout the playoffs. They machine-gunned away at Owen Sound’s Scott Stajcer and Plymouth’s Matt Hackett in the opening two rounds of the playoffs -- a shot a minute was just business as usual.

Not this night. At game’s end, shots were 34 apiece. And on balance, London had more quality scoring chances.

Every time it looked like Windsor was gathering speed on the rush, it was like the Knights threw a couple of bags of salt in the neutral zone. A five-speed transmission and the home team couldn’t get it out of second gear.

"They didn't give us much offensively and that was something we didn't see in the regular season," Boughner said. "Obviously they were working hard and improving and there wasn't much available out there. I told the guys, 'look how good our power play had to be.' I wasn't crazy about our five-on-five."

After a scoreless first you’d have bet that it would be one goal deciding it. It might have looked like a cautious first period but, in fact, it was the Knights’ passive-aggression -- not a hard forecheck so much as a conscientious backcheck -- allowing the Spitfires to get out of their zone but with a mind to force a turnover for the quick counter-attack.

That and the attention that the Spitfires had to pay to R with or without the puck.

"You have to be constantly aware of where [Tavares] is," defenceman Ryan Ellis said after the game. "You have to try to play an angle on him but one-on-one he’s so dangerous."

Kadri opened the scoring on the penalty kill in the fourth minute of the second period.

Carlson forced a turnover and fed a streaking Kadri for a partial breakaway. Kadri clinically deked Windsor netminder Andrew Engelage and threw a backhand by him. The arena went silent but only for a minute in real time.

Twelve ticks of the game clock later Scott Timmins equalized for Windsor, still on the power play, and it looked like order was restored. You would have expected that would kill the Knights. You would have expected the onset of a rout for the Windsor team that owned the OHL this season. Yet by the second intermission the Knights were out in front by two goals.

First came a London power-play goal by Justin Taylor that made it 2-1. And then the prettiest goal of the night, Carlson finishing a four-way passing play with Kadri and Daniel Erlich drawing assists. But perhaps the prettiest pass was made by the player who set the sequence in motion, Tavares, the young man who, to his credit, amusement or discomfort, sits atop Brian Burke’s wish list/publicity campaign. The home team was so transfixed by him that it opened up ice for every other London player skating with him.

That summed out Tavares’s night: Even though he didn’t show up on the scoresheet he was the most dangerous player on the ice. If you were down on the rail you could see the Spitfires flop-sweat every time he touched the puck. The short Ellis and his long defensive partner Harry Young drew the assignment most of the way.

It looked like the Knights were ready to pick up where they left off in their last regular-season game in Windsor a couple of weeks back, a 4-3 win over the Spitfires with Tavares picking up a hat trick. Instead over the next 24 minutes the Spitfires would score three more power-play goals -- by Ellis on a 5-on-3, by Andrei Loktionov on the next shift still on the PP and by Ellis again in OT respectively.

But if it wasn’t for a great (and almost reckless) defensive play by Tavares it might have ended in regulation. Tavares lay down in front of an Ellis shot from the point with two minutes to go. If it hit the wrong spot it could have killed London’s hopes for a long spring right there. Give Tavares points for all-around play -- not necessarily what you think of when his name is mentioned.

Not like there was any comfort there for the winners. In the last minute, little Daniel Erlich almost won the game for the Knights. Erlich had the puck a body length from the crease -- in his case, that’s about five-and-a-half feet -- and Engelage was slat of his stomach. Erlich tried to raise the rubber over the supine netminder but Engelage found it with a desperately flung glove.

All the drama set the stage for overtime -- Carlson ended up in the box and you could have seen in his face the sinking feeling that he might be back out on the ice in less than two minutes.

It’s too bad that NHL scouts are clustered in Fargo for the under-18s because the game, the most entertaining of the three dozen or so OHL contests I’ve made it to, was dominated by three draft-eligible players: Tavares (not news), Kadri and Ellis. The latter two are on the fringe of the lottery but might have convinced NHL teams to bump them up their lists based on their play Wednesday night. Kadri showed a great assortment of passing skills and vision -- he didn’t have an indifferent shift all night. Meanwhile Ellis hung tough when out on the ice against Tavares -- if there were questions about his being able to skate at the next level, he might have answered them when he had to go one-on-one with Tavares and Kadri. And if there are questions about Ellis’s ability to play the point on a power play at the next level against bigger and better opponents… okay, there isn’t that much of question about that.

Game 2 goes in London at 7:30 ET Friday night and the teams will meet back in Windsor Sunday afternoon in a game that will air on Sportsnet. If the Spitfires figure out a way to open up the ice five-on-five, that’s all she wrote. But if the Knights take eight or ten minors, the same applies.

Stuff that fell out of my notebook … Hunter appeared at the post-game press conference. To put this into context, Joaquin Phoenix appeared on David Letterman. The league brought Hunter out for a press conference after the game but you have to wonder why. Hunter answered every question with the same phrase: "They worked hard, they played hard." To offer great insight, he expanded. "My teams work hard and play hard." He also noted that the Knights "worked hard and played hard in the first period" and so on. When asked if he thought Carlson’s hooking penalty in OT was a suspect call he was not even that expansive. "No comment," he said.

Kadri to his credit actually took questions and did not follow the lead of a coach who had a right to be disappointed but an unfulfilled obligation to represent his team and the league. It was asinine. Thoroughly. That it had to play out live on the broadcast of the game tarnishes the image of the league and put league and team officials in an awful spot. If he was just trying to skate around a fine from the league he should just pay it and save one of his hard-working, hard-playing players the embarrassment of sitting beside him. The adult in front of the lights was the kid in the still-drenched sweater.

The Knights’ dressing room was closed to the media after the game and the team was safely sequestered on the bus by the time the press conference was over. I know that Hunter sees it as his job to win but he’s also supposed to be preparing players for the next level -- not the NHL but the rest of their lives. Some role model. …

Michael Del Zotto was sent to the box for tripping in the third period, the first minor in the five-on-three sequence. The ref got the wrong man. It was, in fact, Carlson who did the deed. …

Erlich was flagged for head-checking in the second period. Good luck. He looked like Bob Hoskins in Mona Lisa, trying to throw the flying head-butt at a Spitfire in retaliation for a clean hit.