Box Score
Coming off the worst statistical season of his career, Waterloo Warriors goaltender
Keaton Hartigan (Kitchener/) wasn't expected to steal a playoff series against the league's best team. Evidently, nobody told Hartigan that.
The fifth year veteran backstop stood on his head for the second time in 24 hours, and
Ryan Molle (Calgary/)'s first goal in nearly 15 months held up as the game winner, as the sixth-seed Warriors toppled the top-seeded Western Mustangs 5-3 in the decisive game 3 of the OUA West division semifinal on Sunday night in London.
The Waterloo victory sent shockwaves through the OUA, as the Mustangs – the two-time defending OUA West champions who were ranked third in the nation – suffered their earliest playoff exit since 2008. Meanwhile, the Warriors will advance to the OUA West finals for the first time since 2007, where they'll take on the Windsor Lancers.
After stopping 44 Western shots in Saturday's game two victory, Hartigan made 35 saves, many of the highlight variety, in Sunday's clincher.
Justin Larson (Buckhorn/),
Colin Behenna (Waterloo/), and
Kirt Hill (Winnipeg/) each added a goal and an assist for Waterloo, and
Joe Underwood (Canton/) salted things away with an empty-net goal.
Warrior killer Zach Harnden did everything he could in a losing cause, as he scored all three goals for the host Mustangs. In the absence of OUA wins leader Josh Unice – who was shaken up in the third period of game two – Western backup John Cullen made 21 saves in the defeat.
The Warriors got the jump on Western early, when Hill intercepted the Cullen clearing attempt and drifted home the game's first goal under 8 minutes in. Larson then made it 2-0 on a beauty play in front of the net, where he took the Behenna feed, deeked to the backhand, and outwaited a sprawled Cullen to put it upstairs for a two-goal lead.
Harnden cut the Waterloo lead in half before the end of the first, when he jammed home a pass on the doorstep for the power play marker just over a minute later. Western had more chances to even things up before the end of the period, but Hartigan was outstanding to maintain the Waterloo lead – the Mustangs outshot the Warriors 12-5 in the opening frame.
The second period carried with it some controversy, and it resulted in the Mustangs knotting things at 2. Just moments after the Mustangs disputed that a puck off the crossbar had gone in, Harnden appeared to kick a puck past Hartigan to tie the score at 2-2. Behenna answered just over two minutes later on the man advantage when he sniped a goal high over the outstretched glove of Cullen to put the Warriors back in front 3-2.
The Mustangs once again found an equalizer in the late stages of the period, as Harnden completed the hat trick when he finished an odd-man rush off a feed from Daniel Erlich. It was Harnden's second hat trick against Waterloo this year, and it made the score 3-3 after forty minutes.
Both teams had some chances early in the third, but
Brett Mackie (Whitby/)'s pretty feed to the pinching Molle set up the eventual winner, as Molle whipped a wrister past Cullen on the glove side to put the Warriors up for good. With time ticking down and the Mustangs throwing everything they had at Hartigan, the Warriors were able to clear the zone and Underwood secured victory into the empty net.
The Warriors will now move on to the OUA West division final, where they'll meet the second-seeded Windsor Lancers with a trip to the OUA Queen's Cup final and the CIS University Cup tournament on the line. The series schedule will be available on gowarriorsgo.ca as it becomes available.
Notes: Waterloo went 1-for-3 on the power play, while Western went 1-for-4… Waterloo's last victory in London came on January 18, 2008. They snapped an 11-game losing streak at Thompson Arena…Harnden finished with 11 goals in 6 games against Waterloo this season.
CTV Highlights
