Facing elimination Elora needed a big second period. What better than a two-minute power play to kick things off? Hunter Aggus and the men-in-black would comply with a rather pedestrian hold call but Nagy and his defense partners killed the whole deal. Undeterred, the visitors pressed and Ryan Mueller finally solved Nagy with a very sharp catch-and-shoot on a crease-front fly-by prompted nicely by key weapon Sam Dramnitzke and eventual third star-of-the-game Hyatt Welsh.
Here the above-mentioned choir launched into their mantra but it was the game's eventual second star, Argent gleaning the magic and quickly swindling Fitzy with another beaut, this one teed up by face-off guru Jack Travassos. Yvon Bolduc then followed up with a crafty feed to spring Braedon Saris in alone and the tiger side went up six-to-two, still shy of the game's half-way mark.
Time for a gamble perhaps with the writing on the wall for Elora Mohawks and for the first time in the series Fitzgerald was removed from the pipes in favor of young Sam Hadley. And the gamble indeed looked promising. The B's would not score again in the period as their transition game struggled to get shots to their best sticks. Nagy stayed huge to preserve the big lead as long as he could, especially while short-handed with Sam Gower serving two for another perfunctory holding incident.
But finally the dangerous Dramnitzke rushed in tight with the perfect leap and cut the lead to three. Then in the waning moments of frame-two Welsh and Mueller each scored to make it 6-5 at the break and seemingly anything possible!
Third period. Who would maintain their nerves? Who would break? Aggus took another penalty: A five-minute slashing major, and a dreaded game five started to look like a looming reality. The 'Hawks mounted huge pressure, both creating and giving up big scoring chances. Hadley looked great; Nagy nearly invincible, and when he collapsed to one side in another rebound frenzy it was Aaron Underwood making the jumping chest save with no chest pad and the empty net behind him! Almost miraculously the five-minutes were killed and immediately the Bengals were rewarded a power-play chance of their own. But both penalty-killer squads went perfect on this night and with a quarter frame remaining the score remained 6-5. Could this one-goal lead possibly hold up for the full twenty minutes?