Niagara IceDogs set up final showdown against London Knights: OHL post-game questions

For the record, Niagara IceDogs captain Andrew Agozzino raised the Bobby Orr Trophy and took a short lap around the ice Friday after his team won the OHL Eastern Conference championship. So much for a time-honoured superstition.

"I wanted them to enjoy it," IceDogs coach Marty Williamson said after the 3-2 Game 5 win over the Ottawa 67's, which was capped off by a frantic finish as the 67's looked in vain for a tying goal. "It's a great accomplishment and there's a lot of respect for the Bobby Orr Trophy. But there's another step for us."

The IceDogs, built to win this season with 12 NHL draft picks, face the youngish London Knights in the final beginning May 3. It shall be the second final in three seasons for Williamson, who lost to Windsor with the Barrie Colts in 2010. London's there for the first time since 2006, coincidentally the last time the J. Ross Robertson Cup went East.

"They play a three, four-line game, they get their scoring spread out, outstanding goaltending," Williamson said of the Knights during a media conference telecast on TV Cogeco Ontario. "It'll be a great duel there, the two top goalies in the league [the Knights' Michael Houser and IceDogs' Mark Visentin]. They're just a great, balanced team. It's a great challenge."

On with the post-game questions:

Niagara 3 Ottawa 2 (IceDogs win Eastern Conference championship 4-1) — Does the way the IceDogs defended in this series bode well for the series against the Knights? Save for a 7-3 Game 2 loss that has come to look like an aberration, Niagara limited Ottawa to seven goals in its four victories. The Knights have a deeper lineup than Ottawa, but with two top-10 scorers in Shane Prince and Tyler Toffoli plus future NHL first-rounders Cody Ceci and Sean Monahan, it's not like they're the Channel 7 No-Stars.

The 67's, who nearly forced overtime during a late 6-on-4 penalty, ultimately didn't get enough cracks at Visentin early enough in the game. Toffoli had two glorious chance from the slot in the final seconds. IceDogs centre Steven Shipley dove to block a shot that was so hard that puck ricocheted all the way to the Ottawa blueline. The second Toff-rocket hit a teammate who was trying to screen the netminder.

Niagara showed throughout the series it own the final 20 minutes, outscoring Ottawa 9-4 in third periods. Friday, Williamson's choice to sit on the lead and some game-saving stops by Ottawa's Petr Mrazek lead to the tight finish.

"[A lead of] two goals is tough because I'm preaching on them about defence but you would love to get a three-goal lead and push it, so it's a fine line," Williamson said. "Then teams get one and the momentum changes and you hold the sticks a little tighter. I can thank Freddie [Hamilton] for a little more grey hair with that penalty at the end [with 1:42 left]. I was happy with our effort and now it's enjoy ourselves, get rested and get ready for a different animal.

"I thought we had chances to go up more than 3-1 but they never quit and it ended up being a wild finish. A lot of credit to the 67's."

"It's a little hard to play like that," added Hamilton, who had six points across the series' final two games. "We needed to keep playing our game and keep the play in the end. It's hard to sit back."

The way Niagara protected the lead in the final 102 seconds after Hamilton was sent off was worthy of being shown at a coaching clinic. They jammed up the slot and made sure Ottawa could neither get a shot through traffic or a rebound on the doorstep.

"It was definitely tough," said 67's defenceman Jake Cardwell, a potential overage returnee for next season. "We had a plan, pump pucks at [Visentin's[ feet and jam away for the rebound. I thought we did a good job on the entry. They fanned on a few chances to get it out, we kept it in. Toffoli gets it, the puck rolls. Shipley came up with a block. They really protected the house. You couldn't really penetrate it. I thought we really put some pressure on them."

Any chance of an IceDogs letdown after the euphoria of winning the team's first conference banner since moving to St. Catharines, Ont., just five years ago?

"It's great for all of us to get the support we receive in our community," says Hamilton, whose family resides in the Niagara region. "This team's grown so much in the past few years and this organization keeps going up. We have a lot of older players and it means a lot to experience this for all of them.

"We're not satisfied with this. We're really excited for the next round."

Did fatigue finally overtake Ottawa? The bills probably did come due for Ottawa playing extended series in the first two rounds. They needed six games against No. 7-seeded Belleville and star goalie Malcolm Subban in the opening round and went the full seven vs. battered and bruised Barrie in the conference semifinal. All told, the league's eastern outpost played 18 games in 37 games, a NHL-like schedule. They also had captain Marc Zanetti suspended for half of those games, costing them a contributor on defence.

To his credit, Ottawa coach-GM Chris Byrne didn't adopt a defensive shell like some teams do when depleted. His team wasn't wired that way.

"When we had success, it was because we were pressuring them, we weren't backing off, we weren't playing the trap," he said.

"It's our 18th game and some guys had more ice," he added. "I thought the guys who had a ton of ice played terrific. But sure you could see some of our guys were getting tired."

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Contact him at neatesager@yahoo.ca and follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.