Reece Doumani / @reecedoumani
The Spitfires and Rangers kicked off their second round series in front of 4292 fans at the WFCU Centre on Thursday. Some arguments could be made that the Rangers should have home ice advantage due to the higher point total in the regular season but with the Spitfires winning the West Division, they would open up the series at home.
It would be a scoreless opening period however, the Rangers would lose a big contributor in Christian Humphreys as he collided with Trent Swick at the Spitfires blue line just 3:50 into the game. Humphreys would skate off under his own power but he would not return to the hockey game. According to Josh Brown of The Record, Humphreys is listed as day to day. Shots were 5-5 after 1.
The Spitfires struck first early in the second as Andrew Robinson would score his first career OHL goal to put his team up 1-0. Ryan Abraham and Luke McNamara collected the assists. Anthony Cristoforo would extend the lead four minutes later, poking one five hole past Jackson Parsons to make it 2-0. Cole Davis recorded the lone assist. Windsor would then find themselves with a five on three power play towards the end of the second period and Liam Greentree made the Rangers pay. He fired his eighth goal of the postseason glove side on Parsons to extend the lead to 3. Protas and Abraham collected the assists on the Spitfires power play goal. Windsor would take a 3-0 lead into the dressing room, also outshooting Kitchener 16-15.
The goal scoring would continue early in the third for the Spitfires. Noah Morneau potted his ninth of the playoffs just 3:09 into the final frame to essentially put the game on ice for Windsor. Morneau would add another one at 14:36 to give himself a double digit goal total in the playoffs. This would also be the Spitfires second power play goal of the game to make it 5-0. Rangers would break up the shutout with just 2:13 to go and Tanner Lam banked it off the post and past Joey Costanzo. That is as close as Kitchener would get as the Spitfires walked away with a 5-1 win in game 1.
Joey Costanzo collected his 5th win of the playoffs, stopping 18 of 19 Rangers shots while Jackson Parsons suffered the loss, making 17 saves on 22 shots.
Game 2 between these two clubs goes on Saturday in Windsor at 7:05pm.
