The North York Rangers have faced their first tie of the season after a 2-2 decision against the St. Michael’s Buzzers on Sunday afternoon.
The Rangers haven’t had a good power play this season, but that didn’t matter in the first. At 13:34 in the first, defenceman Sam Hunter took a wicked wrist shot from the point after a pass from defence partner Dante Fantauzzi, beating Cosimo Lazzario to put the Rangers up 1-0 over Hunter’s former team, the Buzzers.
The fans hadn’t even gotten warm back in their seats yet before the Rangers took the 2-0 lead. At 36 seconds into the period, Kyle Clarke stole the puck and broke in on the shorthanded breakaway. The Rangers captain doesn’t miss many opportunities and didn’t in this case, scoring his first goal in exactly a month to make it a two-goal advantage for the home squad wearing their red alternate jerseys.
With close to seven minutes complete in the third, the Buzzers finally found themselves on the board. Ryan Madigan’s wrist shot from the slot would beat Colby Muise’s glove and would hit the post and roll in, giving St. Michael’s some life.
With 1:52, the Buzzers buzzed enough around the net to tie the game up. Northeastern University commit Dylan Jackson would find the puck in a scramble, tapping it in to the left of the net to tie the game and force the battle to overtime. The game wouldn’t find a winner in double overtime, unfortunately, with the game ending up tied at two apiece after two overtime periods.
The Rangers will play just one more game in 2017, a 7:30 PM start against the Toronto Jr. Canadiens at Scotiabank Pond on December 29th. Thank you everybody for your support in 2017 and we can’t wait to kick off our playoff run at the Herb in 2018!
Photo from Steven Ellis/North York Rangers
