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Tourney XVI - FINLAND
3X CHAMPIONS!
Johnny Grant put the curse on them Friday night.
Johnny chose Paul Gach's Team Finland as his favorite to take home the Legacy Cup 2.0. The endorsement usually comes with a guaranteed early afternoon exit.
But as they say...even a blind squirrel finds a nut.
And as Grant watched from behind the netting... first-time OSHLer, Erik Schrempf played the role of the blind squirrel, firing a "shot" towards the Slovenian net with under 10 seconds remaining in the Legacy Cup Championship.
The score was deadlocked at 7.
The shot...could hardly even be classified as a shot.
But...the ball would curve, and spin...several times...before eventually, unbelievably, finding itself in behind Alykhan Nurani, the Slovenian netminder. In a game that had been back and forth throughout the entire 30 minutes, there would be no coming back. And when the final buzzer sounded, it signaled the completion of a number of impressive feats.
Paul Gach becomes the only GM to have led his franchise to three Legacy Cup titles. Gach is the second longest tenured GM associated with a single team. His 15 tournaments at the helm of Team Finland trails only Marcio Mendes, who has been the only GM Team Sweden has ever employed.
Two of Gach's titles have come with Dave Musey playing an intregal part of his squad. Musey, who has also captured a title with Team Canada, becomes just the third player in OSHL history to win three championships as a player. He joins Drew Mrzljak and Dan Volney in this prestigious club. Musey also becomes part of the first father-son title in league history, as his son Nolan, who potted four goals in the final game, played a huge part in bringing home this years cup.
Gach and James Warmington become just the 18th and 19th players to have earned two Legacy Cups as players.
Goaltender Jordan Thompson was another huge piece of the championship puzzle. He earned the Vezina trophy, awarded to the tournaments top goaltender, for his efforts.
While Team Slovenian came up just short, they had two very notable performances. Paul Harnish, the 74th pick in the draft, took home this year's Heart & Hustle award, thanks to his 11 goal, 14 point effort over the 6 games played. Meanwhile, Mike Badun grabbed the Hart Trophy as tournament MVP. All Badun did was bury 18 goals over the course of the day to go along with 28 points. The next closest point producer had 18 points in total.
A couple other items of note:
Blake Romain became the OSHL's all-time leading point producer. Romain has now amassed 246 career points (149-97-246), surpassing Brandon Forbes previous mark of 235 points. Derek Washington (134-77-211) also joined Romain and Forbes this weekend as the only players to eclipse the 200 point mark in league history.
Travis George posted a 1.00 goals against average when Team Denmark defeated Team Germany 6-1 in their tournament opening games. George, ties his own record, which he also shares with Darren Lodge.
Tournament XVI will go down as arguably the most tightly contested tourney of all-time. 10 of the 31 games needed either shootout or overtime to decide. More than half (16) of the games were decided by a single goal. And in the playoffs, 5 of the 7 games were decided by a single goal...with a 6th being just a two-goal difference.
As always, thanks to everyone who played, reffed, timekeeped, took photos/video, or was a part of Tourney XVI in any way. It takes a lot of great people helping out to make this thing a success :)
Congrats to Paul Gach, Geoff Wowk and the rest of Team Finland! Enjoy your reign (for a few months)...please don't lose the Cup!
And hopefully we'll see you all again in May of 2023 for Tourney XVII!
