OTTAWA – “I’ve never had a feeling like that in my life,” Kitchener’s Larry Power said Tuesday after firing the winning goal that put the Ottawa 67’s into the Ontario Hockey League finals against the defending champion Kitchener Rangers.
     A sellout crowd of almost 10,000 fans gave Power a wild standing ovation after he scored his second goal of the night at 4:27 of the final period to give Ottawa an electrifying 5-4 triumph over the Oshawa Generals.
The game ended dramatically when the Generals – with their goalie on the bench and playing with two extra skaters – swarmed around the Ottawa net in the dying seconds but couldn’t score.
    “The last five minutes were just nerve racking.  Everybody was up on their feet at the bench,” said Power, a Kitchener Hockey Association product.
    In winning the eight-point Leyden Division championship 8-6, Ottawa followed the “homer” pattern of the series to the very end.  All seven games were won by the home club.
    Now, the top two teams during the 68-game regular schedule will lock horns – starting Friday in Ottawa and resuming Sunday in Kitchener – to decide the OHL representative in the Memorial Cup tournament May 8-15 in Hull, Que.
Ottawa finished first in the overall standings with a 47-19-2 record for 96 points, five ahead of the Emms Division champion Rangers, who overcame numerous injuries to finish with 91 points on a 44-21-3 chart.  Ottawa won three of four games against the Rangers, whose lone win was a 5-4 victory the last time the teams met.
    “I’m happy to be playing against Kitchener,” Ottawa coach Brian Kilrea said.
    “I’ve got great respect for coach Joe Crozier and for the Kitchener team.  I think it’ll be a good series.  I just hope we can play well enough to let them know they’ll be in a series.”
Kilrea said Tuesday’s thriller was “probably one of the best games ever played in this rink.”
Generals, who outshot Ottawa 42-27, pressed furiously in the final minute, hoping to send the series to an eighth and deciding game in Oshawa tonight.
    The tension mounted when Ottawa’s Mark Paterson took the only penalty of the third period with 21 seconds left as he was called for playing with an illegal stick.
    With the faceoff in the Ottawa end, the Generals pulled their goalie to give them a two-man advantage.  The all-out attack resulted in a shot at Ralph with 13 seconds left, but Ottawa defenceman John Odam blocked the shot and fell on it to create another dramatic faceoff inside the Ottawa blueline.  On the draw, there was a fight for the puck when Moe Lemay tipped it outside the line to run out the clock.
    Power’s two goals gave him six in 12 playoff games.  The 18-year-old rookie was Ottawa’s fourth highest point getter during the schedule with 25 goals and 48 assists for 73 points in 68 games.
    Power, a Truro, NS native whose family moved to Kitchener when he was three years old, was drafted in the 12th round by Ottawa two summers ago but played for the Kitchener Ranger B’s last season.  The Hartford Whalers of the National Hockey League drafted him in the 10th round last June.
    Another Kitchener product ex-Ranger Don McLaren, continued his scoring heroics for Ottawa.  Tuesday, McLaren scored on the first shift of the game to give him a team-high 12 goals in the playoffs.
    Ollson and Adam Creighton, scored the other Ottawa goals while Jeff Steffen, Bob Kucheran, Dave Gans and Joe Cirella replied for Oshawa.
    “We knew it would be a tough series, but we thought it would be over quicker – in five or six games,” Power said.  “They played well in their own rink and we had trouble there.”
    Ottawa’s last appearance in the OHL finals was in 1976-1977 when they beat London Knights for their first league championship.  They reached the finals in 1971-72 but lost to the Peterborough Petes.
 
 

     Forward Pat Verbeek, Sudbury Wolves’ No. 1 draft pick last summer, is the Ontario Hockey League rookie of the year while three Kitchener natives – including Kitchener Rangers defenceman Scott Stevens – finished in the top six in the coaches’ voting.
     Stevens and Belleville Bulls center Dunc MacIntyre tied for second with 20 points (Verbeek had 32), but MacIntyre was placed second on the basis of more first-place votes.
     Kitchener native Brian Bradley of London Knights was fourth with 16 points followed by winger Carmen Vani of Kingston Canadiens with 10 and Kitchener native Brad Shaw of Ottawa 67’s with nine.
     Stevens, Bradley and Shaw played on the same minor-midget team in Kitchener under coach Myron Stankiewicz.
     Verbeek, 17 was the top rookie scorer in the OHL despite playing for a last-place team.  He had 37 goals and 51 assists for 81 points in 66 games.