The Wellington Dukes 2025-26 season will be on the line Friday night back at Lehigh Arena.
In arguably Wellington’s best overall performance of the series so far, the team went right down to the wire but came up short of an equalizer in a 3-2 Game 3 loss on Tuesday.
Special teams came up big in a penalty-filled affair for the Dukes, who went seven-for-seven on the penalty kill and notched their only two goals of the game on seven powerplay opportunities.
The Dukes played a competitive first period where they outshot the hosts 13-10, but came up goalless before the offence came flowing out in the second.
For the third time in as many games in the series, Wellington opened the scoring, getting one through Will Mitchell for his first of the postseason, assisted by Landon Marleau and goaltender Dryden Riley.
Pickering got its response with two swift goals 32 seconds apart off the sticks of veterans Matt Indovina and Marco Costante to wrestle its way into the lead.
Discipline wound up hanging the Panthers up again though and young Evan Erwin managed to whack home a rebound off a stopped shot by Anthony Sciere.
Zack Carrier and Liam Campbell drew assists at 7:27.
This chippy game appeared to be going into the third period deadlocked until the Panthers got clutch with 38 seconds to go on a shot from Gabriel Ciarallo that squeaked underneath Riley to give the Panthers the lead for good.
A load of penalties interrupted third period flow, but not the Dukes gumption and despite a strong push near the end, they couldn’t come up with the tying goal.
Final shots favoured Pickering 35-27, with Riley again outstanding to keep his team in the game.
The Dukes will try to pave the comeback trail starting Friday the 13th at 7:30 p.m.
