Oshawa Generals win Memorial Cup overtime thriller

Stephen Desrocher gave the Oshawa Generals the win in a Memorial Cup thriller, scoring 18:07 into overtime for a 5-4 win over the Quebec Remparts.

Desrocher scored directly off a Cole Cassels faceoff win to quiet a Colisée crowd of 10,970, as the Generals squeezed out the victory despite playing their seventh period of hockey in a span of 27 hours. The OHL champions, who have secured at least a semfinal berth with a 2-0 record, were ahead on the shot counter in every period and  solved Montreal Canadiens goalie prospect Zach Fucale on their 50st shot of the afternoon and 18th of the overtime.

Cassels won the faceoff to set up the winning goal just minutes after blocking an Adam Erne slapshot with his leg and limping to the Oshawa bench in severe pain.  Desrocher put a shot under the crossbar after warding off Remparts centre Kurt Etchegary.

Cassels also assisted on Tobias Lindberg's late third-period tying goal, which came about via a disciplinary lapse. With 4:06 left and Quebec leading 4-3 by virtue of consecutive goals from rookie Dmytro Timashov in the first half of the third stanza, Guillaume Gauthier was gated for a check to the head of defenceman Mitchell Vande Sompel. Oshawa's power play, 0-for-8 in the tournament at that point, struggled to gain traction, but after two Remparts players suffered broken sticks, Ottawa Senators prospect Tobias Lindberg struck with 2:09 left.

Goaltender Ken Appleby, burned by a bad-angle shot from Timashov on Quebec's go-ahead goal 8:48 into the third, came up with several saves to keep the Generals in the hunt before Lindberg levelled.

Quebec (1-1), which relies heavily on just four defencemen, has a two-day break before it faces Rimouski on Wednesday. The Remparts also lost games 6 and 7 of the Quebec League final against Rimouski in overtime.

The teams' sputtering power plays each ignited in the third. The Remparts, mired in a 1-for-13 drought on the man advantage across their past five games, tied the game at 5:39 when Timashov scored from a tight angle. The goal came just 12 seconds after a penalty to Cassels, one of Oshawa's best faceoff takers and penalty-killing forwards.

Timashov's first goal also cancelled out Generals defenceman Dakota Mermis' goal at 2:34 of the period on a point shot where Fucale was screened by Hunter Smith. That tally came five seconds after a penalty expired.

The teams traded goals twice within the game's first 23 minutes.  Montreal Canadiens first-rounder Michael McCarron got the icebreaker just 2:18 into the game with a waist-high redirection of a shot by Mitchell Vande Sompel.

The Remparts' response came at 5:43 when Raphaël Maheux took a cross-ice pass from Arizona Coyotes prospect Anthony Duclair and snapped a shot that goalie Ken Appleby could only partially stop as it ticked in ot the net. Maheux became the fourth Remparts defenceman to score in the tournament.

At 12:40, Vladimir Tkachev shot high and wide and the puck caromed around the boards and past a pinching Ryan Graves, staking McCarron and Michael Dal Colle to a 2-on-1 rush. Dal Colle beat Zach Fucale high blocker side after a deft cross-ice feed from McCarron.

Fucale avenged that play with a lunging save on Matt Mistele early in the second period after a long Oshawa encampment in the Remparts zone. That led to a counter-attack, with Graves scoring at 2:43 on a setup from Marc-Olivier Roy, an Edmonton Oilers draft pick who has yet to be signed by the NHL club.

Duclair, who spent the first half of the season with the NHL's New York Rangers and was a frontline forward for Canada at the world junior championship, has yet to score in the tournament.

Kelowna and Rimouski, each 0-1, face off on Monday.

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