It was a Family Day game, but it should have been billed as the Sasha Chmelevski show as the Ottawa 67’s forward scored five goals, en route to a 6-3 defeat of the North Bay Battalion.
Chmelevski opened the scoring with his 25th goal of the season at 9:02 of the first, and would add four more in the second period.
“It’s really special,” Chmelevski said after the game.
“I think my energy was really high during the game and that allowed me to play really well. At the same time, I thought my linemates did a great job of getting me the puck, so I was fortunate to have a great night.”
It sets a new career high for the San Jose Sharks 6th round pick from the 2017 draft, having three goals as his previous game-high performance.
He said he was particularly happy about the second goal, which came at 6:01 of the second period. But having scored five in one game, he had plenty to choose from.
“Even the fifth one, I just went hard to the net,” says Chmelevski. “It’s something we talk about all the time and I just did all the things we talk about and my hard work paid off.”
67’s Head Coach André Tourigny says “I’m happy to see [Chmelevski] have a big night and get rewarded like that.”
Tourigny added “He was in the right place at the right time. There were a couple of plays where he had good positioning and he took advantage of it.”
Chmelevski is just one of the weapons this Ottawa (44-9-3-2) team boasts, as the top team in the Eastern Conference. Chmelevski’s five-goal night gives him 29 on the season, while guys like Kyle Maksimovich (35-43-78) and Kody Clark (14-26-40) are penciled in on the third line.
Tourigny says he tries to even out the ice time between all his lines, which he admits is a little easier when you have guys who can score on the ice at any given time.
“That’s the luck we have as a coaching staff and as a team, to have a lot of depth. [Scoring] can come from anybody,” he says.
“It was Sasha with that game today, earlier this week we got a hat-trick from Maksimovich, and we got a really good night last night from [Austen] Keating (2 goals and 2 assists in 6-3 win over Kitchener). So every night it can be a different line…and that’s good for us.”
The Battalion was held to just three shots in the first period, compared to the 20 that Ottawa put against North Bay netminder Christian Propp. But after Chmelevski got the 67’s ahead 2-0, Brandon Coe made it a one-goal game at 7:06 of the second period. However, right after Coe scored his 15th of the season he levelled Kody Clarke and that led to a melee with a few players being sent to the box, including Coe and Merrick Rippon who dropped the gloves.
A play earlier in the period resulted in Brad Chenier having to leave the game.
Chenier was skating through the neutral zone when Noel Hoefenmayer cut across the ice and threw his hands up high, connecting with Chenier’s chin. Chenier got spun around and took a while to get up, and eventually went to the locker room and did not return to the game. No penalty was assessed on the dangerous play by the 67’s defenceman.
After Coe’s goal to cut the lead to one, the 67’s exploded for three goals in the span of just under two minutes.
Chmelevski scored his hat-trick goal at 10:11, regaining the two-goal lead for Ottawa.
Tye Felhaber (who recorded a third-period hat-trick against North Bay earlier in the year) scored his league-leading 55th goal of the season at 11:21.
It was Chmelevski getting number four on the night and number 28 of the year at 11:54 and in the span of just under five minutes, the Troops went from down 2-1, to down 5-1.
The Luke Moncada, Harrison Caines, Patrick Brown line continued to earn their own ice-time by getting a pair of goals for the Battalion.
The first came at 15:24 of the second period when the Battalion were on the penalty kill.
Caines picked up a puck at the blue line and sped down the ice. He gained entry into the zone and fed it across the slot to Moncada who deflected it past Ottawa goaltender Michael DiPietro, once again cutting into the lead at 5-2.
Caines would score later in the game in the third period at 15:35, his seventh of the season.
Talking to Caines before the game, he discussed being part of the third line that is getting recognized for their efforts, “working on that line [with Moncada and Brown] it’s a grinder line but we’re going to try and put the pucks in when we can.”
He added, “the coaches are telling us to just go out and do our job, work as hard as we can and I think that’s what we have been doing. We’ve been going out every shift and giving it our all and the coaches have seen that and they have been playing us more and more.”
That line seemed to get more ice time as the game moved along, but when Chmelevski scored his fifth of the game (and fourth of the second period) at 18:45, the game looked too far out of reach for the Troops.
The loss keeps the Battalion in seventh place in the Eastern Conference, four back of 6th place Hamilton and two up on 8th place Peterborough.
And those pesky Barrie Colts are still hanging around in 9th with 50 points, just three behind the Petes 53.
The Battalion has eight games remaining in the regular season and faces a tough stretch this weekend, with three road games against Western Conference opponents; Sarnia, Windsor, and London.
