The South Shore Kings won the 2023-24 Dineen Cup Championship with a 4-3 overtime victory against the Ogden Mustangs, the Mountain Division Champion. Justin Ryan scored the OT Winner at 3:23.
#DineenCupFinals: ICYMI Game 3 (and if so, WHAT?!? and WHY?!?), here's a recap of today's goals – and a little @SSK_Hockey celly style to close us out on this Sunday evening! pic.twitter.com/gwR9Fv0JwP
— NCDC Hockey (@NCDCJrHockey) April 29, 2024
The Mustangs made it interesting by scoring with 1:16 remaining to tie the game and force overtime after earlier going down 3-2 in the third period.
Each regulation period saw a tie score at the end, with each team scoring one goal apiece in each period through through 60 minutes.
Kotaro Murase’s third of the playoffs was scored at the 7:00 mark after he came down the left side of the slot and put one past Ogden’s Nikita Volsky. Thomas Delfarno assisted.
Ogden’s Teddie Hember scored his first of two in the final game by scoring on a rebound, with assists from Corson Maguire and Sam Anderson at 17:30.
The second period was back-and-forth until at 6:11, Mustangs’ Captain Dimitri Voyatzis scored his team’s only go-ahead goal of the game, popping in a feed at the side of the net from Parker Osborn. Tyler Lafferty also assisted.
Just 1:28 later, Salvatore Cerrato scored on a point-blank slapshot to tie the game at 2-2. Cerrato was assisted by Kavanagh and Wilson.
The third period was again a struggle for both teams to build any kind of momentum against the other, but the Kings’ Kavanagh broke through at 13:46 with a rebound of an original shot by Patrik Bruna.
It seemed like this might be the Kings’ day in regulation as the clock was ticking down, but Hember had other ideas. He slapped a hard shot through traffic from the right point at 18:44, and that goal stood up as the tying game to end regulation.
Ryan’s goal happened as he sent home a rebound of a shot by Cerrato off an original pass by Ryan as the Kings broke in essentially 3-on-2.
The NCDC congratulates the Kings on winning the championship, and the Ogden Mustangs on reaching their first Dineen Cup Finals and pushing the series to three games and a deciding Game 3 overtime before it was settled.
