London, ON - The Mustangs dropped a 4-3 back and forth meeting with the Laurier Golden Hawks on Saturday night on home ice.
Western got the game started early on when Eric Van Impe fed a cross ice pass to Jake Murray who picked up his first OUA goal on his first OUA shift.
"Jake's had a lot of things he's had to overcome and when you get to know people off the ice, in the dressing room you really root for people," said Mustangs Captain Kyle Pettit "It's one of those guys that you really root for and when he got his first shift and his first goal it's just great to see and everyones happy for him,"
After the Golden Hawks evened the game up, Western would strike again around the midway point of the period on the powerplay. The Mustangs would move the puck around the top of the zone when Jake Gravelle fed Franco Sproviero in the middle of the ice who wristed it into the Laurier net to take a 2-1 lead.
Laurier evened up the game in the second period and the Mustangs would regain the lead, this time Sproviero would feed Erin Van Impe coming into the Laurier zone and he would fire the ouck to the top corner to give Western a 3-2 lead.
Late in the third the Mustangs would get themselves into penalty trouble when Jake Gravelle would be called for a double minor and give Laurier the man advantage. Laurier would convert on the powerplay to tie the game at 3's and send it to overtime.
"One of the things you need to do if you want to be a great team is to be able to keep your composure at tough times and that's an area where tonight we didn't do our best tonight," said Head Coach Clarke Singer "That's something that is on us as coaches to make sure we're addressing that and making sure in those big moments we can handle them."
In overtime the Mustangs had a few opportunities early on to end the game including a couple of saves from Dylan Myskiw.
"We stuck with it the whole game tonight but I felt a few bounces really didn't go our way," said Myskiw "I think they definitely got lucky tonight to get the win tonight."
The Golden Hawks ended up scoring just before the 5 minute mark of the extra frame to take the win and the extra point.
"We've had a couple time this season where we have been in this same type of position where we've had the lead later in games and haven't been able to finish things off," said Petti "That's three point already this season that we'd really like to have back."
The Mustangs next action will see them head to Windsor next weekend for a pair of back-to-back games against the Lacers. The first game goes Friday night at 7:30pm, fans can watch the action on OUA.tv
