BAIE-COMEAU, QC --- Veteran Saint John Sea Dogs centre Michael Kirkpatrick proved he has a flair for the dramatic on Friday night, leading his team to an incredible come-from-behind victory over the Baie-Comeau Drakkar at the Henry Leonard Centre.Trailing 2-1 at the 59:58 mark of the game, Kirkpatrick scored a miraculous goal on an expertly-executed play from the face-off circle to force an unlikely overtime session. After the extra frame failed to produce a victor, Friday's contest entered a shootout in which Kirkpatrick tallied the lone marker of the decisive fifth round, giving the Sea Dogs an incredible 3-2 victory.
Saint John has now won seven straight games, tying a franchise record. The Sea Dogs remain the #1 team in both the Atlantic Division and the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
Zack Phillips also scored for the visitors on Friday, while Simon Olsson and Guillaume Goulet each tallied markers for the hosts.
Between the pipes, sophomore Saint John goalie Karel St-Laurent (26 saves) improved to 5-2 on the season while his counterpart, Nathan Dunnett (26 saves), fell to 4-9 after suffering a gut-wrenching home loss.
After a back-and-forth opening seventeen minutes of play failed to produce a goal at either end of the ice, Saint John took a 1-0 lead late in the opening frame courtesy a highlight-reel marker off the stick of rookie forward Zack Phillips. Starting in his own zone, the 17-year old Frederictonian took the puck from one end of the rink to the other, putting on a stick-handling clinic as he skated around several Drakkar players. After turning a Baie-Comeau defenseman inside out deep in the hosts' zone, Phillips finished off the play by roofing a shot over Dunnett's shoulder from a tough angle, making the third goal of his season of the sensational variety.
Baie-Comeau tied things up five minutes into the second period, as Simon Olsson snuck out from behind Saint John's net during a Drakkar power play to bang home a rebound produced by a Guillaume Goulet point shot. The home team went up 2-1 at the 12:19 mark of the middle frame when Goulet finished off an odd-man-rush buy wiring home his 13th goal of 2009-10 on a bullet of a snap shot that eluded St-Laurent on its netward journey.
The Sea Dogs came close to retying the match several times in the final minutes of the second period, but some exceptional work by Nathan Dunnett in net for Baie-Comeau kept the Drakkar's precarious one-goal lead in tact as Friday's game reached the second intermission.
Dunnett continued to stymie Saint John shooters throughout regulation's final stanza, confounding his opponents time and time as the Sea Dogs' mounting frustration began to approach critical levels. After a frantic sequence in the final minute of regulation saw several scoring chances being registered by the visitors, none of which proved successful, it indeed appeared that the Drakkar would hang on for the win.
With only two seconds remaining on the clock and with a face-off being staged in Baie-Comeau territory however, Michael Kirkpatrick produced a late-match equalizer for the ages. In a single, fluid motion, the 19-year old centre fired the puck through Dunnett's pads from the left face-off circle as soon as it hit the ice, tying the game up at two apiece on an incredible play which left the 1,666 fans on hand dumfounded as the Drakkar's apparent victory had been nullified at the behest of an incredible play by Saint John's reigning M.V.P.
After five minutes of overtime failed to produce a resolution, Friday's contest entered a winner-take-all breakaway contest, adding further to the palpable drama at the Drakkar's home arena.
All six shooters converted on their attempts in the opening three rounds of the penalty shot showdown, resultantly sending the shootout to a sudden-death segment. In the fifth round of the post-OT skater-versus-goalie challenge, Michael Kirkpatrick beat Dunnett cleanly while St-Laurent denied David Cliche, delivering Saint John an instant victory.
The 15-4-1-0 Sea Dogs will wrap up their three-game tour of Quebec on Sunday afternoon at Rimouski Coliseum as they face the Oceanic at 5:00pm AST. Saint John's next home game is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, November 4 at 7:00pm versus the Halifax Mooseheads. Tickets to this mid-week intradivisional tilt can be obtained by calling the Harbour Station Box Office at (506) 657-1234.
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