OTTAWA - The Carleton Ravens retained the Colonel By Classic flag with a thrilling 8-7 overtime victory on Sunday evening. Majid Kaddoura scored 6:13 into overtime to give the Ravens their fourth victory in five editions of the crosstown rivalry.
An explosive first period set the tone for a fantastic evening of hockey at The Arena at TD Place as Carleton and uOttawa exchanged five goals to open the 2023 Colonel By Classic. Garrett Wright (Thunder Bay, Ont.) opened the scoring for Carleton before Brogan O'Brien (Prince George, BC) tipped home a Simon Kerr (Kingston, Ont.) pass to put the Ravens up 2-0 just 11:00 into the contest. After Nicholas Ouellet scored to cut the Ravens lead, Parker AuCoin (Sturgeon County, Alta.) scored his league leading nineteenth goal of the season.
It looked as though the Ravens would carry that momentum into the break before Bradley Chenier scored with less than thirty seconds to play in the period to once again split the lead.
The Gee-Gees would bookend the second period scoring with goals from Max Grondin and Charles-Antoine Roy bookending a Matt Barberis (Vancouver, BC) tally before things really got interesting in the third.
Starting the period tied at four, the Ravens got goals just 39 seconds apart from Aaron Boyd (Winnipeg, Man.) and AuCoin looked to be comfortably in the lead. Just over five minutes later, Chenier would score his second of the night but the Ravens responded quickly as a Lukash Matthews (Ottawa, Ont.) rattled around and found its way past JP Tourigny for the Ravens seventh of the game.
Chenier would complete his hat-trick just ninety seconds later before Liam Markhauser tied the game with 5:25 to play sending it to overtime.
In the extra frame the Ravens looked like they had the best chance of the night when a wrist shot rang off the bar behind Mark Grametbauer until Majid Kaddoura played the hero. Just eleven days after his hat trick against the Queen's Gaels, the Ravens defender banked a puck off Tourigny from below the goal line to send the Ravens fans into a frenzy.
Carleton now face another bitter rivalry when they play a home-and-home with the UQTR Patriotes. The mini-series begins on the road Wednesday night at UQTR before returning to the Carleton Ice House on Saturday.
