Erie Otters edge Oshawa Generals: OHL post-game questions

With the Erie Otters having the last change at home, Connor McDavid found a slew of open ice and factored into a two 5-on-5 goals, fostering the winning margin against Oshawa.

The top NHL draft prospect made a deft backhand feed to Remi Elie (1G-1A, +2) for the first-period icebreaker and finished off an odd-man rush in the third to open a three-goal spread. That furnished enough cushion for a 4-3 Otters win after Cole Cassels (2G) led a Generals comeback. There's now a chance for a tied series.

"I felt like I had a little bit more room — still, obviously, not a whole lot of room," McDavid (1G-1A, +1) said. "They still play a very tight defensive game. Having last change helps. We'll see what happens on Wednesday.

"This is big," added McDavid, who has a playoff-leading 45 points. "It shows that we can really compete with these guys. For 55 minutes I thought we played very well, similar to Game 2 in Oshawa. They were able to make it closer than it needed to be."

On with the post-game questions:

Erie 4 Oshawa 3  (Generals lead 2-1, Otters host Game 4 on Wednesday) — What was the X factor for the Otters? Whether Kyle Pettit pans out as a prospect for the Vancouver Canucks, who took him No. 156 overall last summer, remains to be seen. The 19-year-old was invaluable in his first game oin two months, helping Erie roll four lines while upping its efficiency on faceoffs. Simply put, the Otters started with the puck more frequently.

"I've never been part of three games with as many icings as we've had," Otters coach Kris Knoblauch said. "You can get mismatches for lines even when you're the away team. In our league, you can ice the puck and you're not stuck [not being able to substitute]. Tonight, we had a lot of faceoffs and we were able to get a match and that had to lot to do with getting more offence. The addition of Kyle Pettit also allowed us to play four lines and not really worry about who matched up against whom. Kyle was huge for us, coming back from injury and being a huge faceoff guy."

"We had fewer opportunities than we did in Game 2, but we were able to score this time," said Knoblauch, whose club did all of its damage at even strength, where it scored only once in the first two games.

Bradley Latour, one McDavid's banes in the first two games, wound up on the ice for all four Otters goals. Two of those came on uncharacteristic Generals giveaways; as coach D.J. Smith noted after Game 2, it's tough for Oshawa to stay on-point in each game.

"I thought it was an okay game for us, and that's it," said Smith, whose team was down by three with five minutes left before strikes from Sam Harding and Cassels. "We had a good first period and probably deserved better and got down 2-0 on two bad coverages. Second period, I didn't think we pressed enough. Third period we tried to open it up and had a couple costly mistakes."

McDavid evaded another nemesis, Dakota Mermis, before finding Elie for a snapshot goal in the first period. The star's playoff-leading 20th goal came on a counter-attack.

"As much as they don't want to admit that line changes and matchups matter to them, they're trying really hard to get him away from our shutdown guys," Smith said of McDavid. "But he finds ways to get loose he's the best player in the world for a reason. If I don't have my five best guys on the ice he's going to be dangerous."

How much impact did a disallowed Generals goal at the end of the second period have on the outcome? Officials put 1.5 seconds back on the clock after timekeepers were slow on the trigger following a whistle. Off the enusing faceoff, Michael McCarron drew the puck directly back to Matt Mistele, whose one-timer ticked off goalie Devin Williams and into the net. However, it was clear the goal didn't beat the buzzer, plus Oshawa's Josh Brown was in the crease. The impact, in that event, should have been negligible.

"It was going to be disallowed whether it went in or not because they had a guy in our crease," Knoblauch said.

How much confidence do the Generals take out of their near comeback? For those scoring at home, Oshawa has a 9-2 edge in third-period goals. It's a small of a sample size, but it is the mark of the more experienced team being able to force Erie to fray a bit. Concomitantly, though, the Generals didn't reach their peak until after Betz buried a Nick Baptiste setup for the 4-1 lead.

"We're pretty confident with the way we finished the game," Cassels said. "Our goal on Wednesday is to start strongly.

Meantime, Erie showed  what it is capable of doing when it's not fighting the current after allowing the first goal, which enables the Generals to dictate tempo by falling back into a more defensive posture (ix-nay on the rap--tay).

"It makes them open up a little bit," Knoblauch said of playing with a lead. "They have to generate some offence and we don't have to pressure. We can generate opportunities off any mistakes they make, which are few."

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.