Well that was quite the roller-coaster ride Friday night at the Joe Thornton Community Centre.
Let’s quickly re-cap.
Twice the St. Thomas Stars overcame two-goal London leads.
Twice the Nationals had to erase a one-goal St. Thomas cushion.
And in the end, London’s Jeff Burridge completed his hat-trick with the overtime winner to give the visitors an entertaining 7-6 win.
The game did not look to be a close encounter to start with as the Nats jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first five minutes on goals from Burridge and Zach Power.
The latter spent a good portion of the game – 18 minutes to be exact – sitting out penalties, including a 10-minute misconduct.
Tristen Roberts and Ryan Cooper pulled St. Thomas even before the end of the first period.
And then Roberts gave the Stars a brief 3-2 lead in the middle frame.
Brief as in less than a minute before Burridge buried his second goal of the game.
Tanner Dietz gave St. Thomas another short-lived advantage with his fifth goal of the season.
Again, it only took London a minute or so to tie it all up at four apiece with Power’s second tally.
Logan Pace-Roth and Ryan Nicholls put the puck behind Stars’ netminder Owen Willmore to restore London’s two-goal margin.
Midway through the third period Ben MacRobbie cut the lead in half with his 11th goal of the campaign and Tristen Gerth with his first on a power-play knotted the game at 6-6 with less than four minutes remaining.
With Burridge’s winner in OT, the Stars had to settle for the single point.
They are now tied with the Rockets in seventh place with 19 points in the GOJHL Western Conference and the two teams square off tonight in Strathroy.
You can catch all the action on myFM beginning at 7:20 p.m. with Chris Soares.
