Guelph, ON – The Mustangs dropped Game 1 of the Queen's Cup West Final 2-1 to the Guelph Gryphons in overtime on Thursday night.
The Mustangs won the regular season series 2-1 including a 5-4 win over Guelph at the Faceoff at the Forks in front of over 2600 fan at Budweiser Gardens in late January.
After a largely back and forth first fifteen minutes of the opening period it was Guelph who found the scoreboard first. Matt Kenney would pull into the Mustangs zone and sent a wrister on net which hit Mustangs goaltender Luke Peressini's blocker, flew up in the air and then fell behind him and slid into the net. Guelph outshot the Mustangs 16-10 in the first period but the score remained at 1-0 for Guelph at the end of 20 minutes.
The Mustangs outshot the Gryphons 10-8 in the second period but neither side found the net and it remained 1-0 Guelph.
Western would crack the scoreboard early in the third period. After picking the puck up behind the net, Franco Sproviero fed the puck to Sean Montgomery in the slot who fired it home to tie the game up at 1-1.
The score remained tied at the end of regulation so overtime would be needed to decide a winner.
After the Gryphons got multiple shots on the Mustangs cage in extra time, they picked up the puck in the neutral zone and came into the Western zone with a 3 on 2 advantage, after a missed poke check the Gryphons found Stephen Templeton who beat Peressini on the blocker side to win the game and take the series lead 1-0.
Peressini made 48 saves on the night of the 50 Guelph shots while Western fired 27 shots on the Guelph cage.
The series now swings back to Western on Saturday for Game 2 at Thompson Arena. Puck drop is set for 3pm and tickets are on sale at westernmustangs.ca/tickets.
