Oshawa Generals Defeats McDavid, Otters For OHL Title

The Oshawa Generals are going to the Memorial Cup.

It took just five games for the Generals to defeat the Erie Otters. The clinching game came on Friday night with a 6-2 victory to advance to the Memorial Cup in Quebec City. It is their 13th OHL title, the most of any team in the league.

The story of the series continued on Friday as the Generals once again held Otters star Connor McDavid scoreless. McDavid, the OHL’s most outstanding player for this season, had dominated all playoffs until the Oshawa series. The Generals held him scoreless twice, one of just two teams to do so this season.

“I feel great for our guys, the core group of guys who have put their time in, and put up with a lot of me leaning on them hard, but certainly they’re rewarded tonight,” head coach DJ Smith was quoted in the Durham Record after the game. “We were overlooked because a lot of teams scored more goals than us. It’s tough to keep selling, it takes a lot of people to buy in to play defence like that.”

Oshawa held Erie to just two third period goals this series and gave them back to back losses; the only time the Otters expierienced this since McDavkd returned from injury mid way through the season.

The star who shone brightest this series was the Generals’ Cole Cassells, who led the five games with twve points.

Via Yahoo! Canada:

"“I love these guys to death,” Cassels, a Vancouver Canucks signing, told Sportsnet 360. “It was a total team effort to shut down Connor McDavid and the Erie Otters. I couldn’t be more proud of this team. He’s the best player in the world. We had to try to get in his grille and get him off his game.”"

Matt Mistele also scored his 13th goal of the playoffs in the victory. He was the leading scorer for Oshawa.

The Generals got going right away, scoring three times in the first five minutes. The air seemed to be sucked from Erie right away and they were not able to recover.

“I never thought this would’ve happened in my OHL career and for it to finally happen, it’s unbelievable,” goalie Ken Appleby told the Durham Region. “We’ve got a great team. Lots of people underestimated us, but we never doubted ourselves once and we were able to get it done.”