Five days after the Wellington Dukes and Markham Royals engaged in a thriller at the Duke Dome, they put up another gem against each other on Friday at Honey and Barry Memorial Arena.
This time, the Dukes needed to claw their way out of a four-goal hole to earn a single point in a 5-4 overtime loss to the Royals.
After falling in a 9-4 decision in Cobourg Monday, it appeared another tough blow was going to be delivered to the Dukes when the Royals jumped out to their 4-0 lead on 13 shots in the first courtesy of Charlie Annett, Chance Adams, Yehor Staiko, and Josh Caeser.
Wellington’s comeback bid started with Austin Ottenhof’s first official OJHL goal (after scoring the shootout winner versus Leamington back on October 6) from Justin Doak at the 4:07 mark of the second frame.
More than two minutes later, Kasen Beitz took a pass from Cooper Woron, back in the lineup after about a month out due to injury, walked out from behind the Markham cage and snuck a shot through Jacob Ceranic on the short-side for goal #9 of his season.
A late Markham penalty resulted in Zach Anderson putting one home with a setup from Jayden Levesque and Marco Wolf to trim the gap even more.
Off the jump in the third, Wellington carried its momentum forward with Levesque’s rocket for his fourth of the season from Anderson and a back-and-forth ensued through the rest of regulation, with Dukes goalie Dryden Riley rebounding nicely after the early wobbles.
In overtime though, the Royals managed to find a path to the net and converted through Andrew Pacheco 53 seconds into the bonus frame.
Riley finished with 30 saves as the Dukes fell to 10-5-2-1 on the season, with 23 points to keep hold of second place in the East Conference.
The Dukes will have the rest of the weekend off prior to meeting with the Toronto Warriors Monday at 7:45 p.m.
