67’s take command of playoff series with three straight wins

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One of the great leaders in Ottawa 67’s history has resurfaced to deliver a speech that players on today’s team say is largely  responsible for lifting them into the driver’s seat of their opening round playoff series against the favoured Brantford Bulldogs.

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Yes, it appears that 23 years after captaining a ragtag group of underdogs to an OHL championship and a Memorial Cup in Regina it should have been watching from their living rooms on TV,  Zenon Konopka, a fifth-round pick (107th overall) of Brian Kilrea’s in the 1998 OHL Priority Selection, is proving to be the gift that keeps on giving.

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The 67’s entered the 2023-24 post-season tournament as the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference, five points behind the No. 3 seed Bulldogs, against whom took only one of four regular season games and needed a 6-5 road shootout on Jan. 12 to do it.

After being out-classed 5-2 in last Friday’s series opener, they looked to be on their way to an early exit.

The next day, the team was invited for a catered dinner of chicken cutlets, tortellini, sausage and a lot of other good stuff to the Stoney Creek home of captain Luca Pinelli’s parents, Daniella and Frank.

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Konopka, who scraped and clawed his way through 346 NHL games and is now a successful businessman in his hometown of Niagara-on-the-Lake, has trained Pinelli’s brothers and is a meat supplier for “Francesco”, who invited him to make the 45 minute drive to join the team dinner.

Once there, Konopka told the gathering about the ’01 squad that was one point away from being out of a playoff spot with eight games left in the regular season, then went on to defeat four more talented opponents, without a single series going seven games, en route to the national championship tournament.

Only two other players on that Ottawa team – Brendan Bell (102 games) and Luke Sellars (one game) – went on to play in the NHL, and the way the group bonded for success that spring represents the proudest moment of Konopka’s career.

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“That (OHL championship) ring is the one I wear,” Konopka, who was also on 67’s team that won the Memorial Cup two years earlier in Ottawa, said in a phone conversation Friday morning. “We had nobody and we did something with nothing.”

The come-together moment for those 67’s was a bus ride on which they watched a war movie – Saving Private Ryan – and respectfully related it to their own “battles” by using Sharpies to put a black mark on their face for each series they were in.

Not for a second were they being casual about the men and women who gave their lives for our country – Konopka talked to his uncles and his grandfather who fought in the war for a better understanding of what they went through – but the comparison was made strictly to emphasize the importance of sacrifice and team work in a playoff series.

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“When I talked to the team, I said, listen, one thing I know is you guys are more talented than we were,” said Konopka. “But there’s some similarities here. We were a fourth seed and they’re a sixth, but I said, you’ve had stretches where you guys were pretty good. I explained to the guys that in war, you don’t worry about yesterday. You don’t worry about tomorrow. You don’t save anything in the tank. It’s survival. I said, we’re worried about blocking shots or taking a hit? My grandfather was 15 when he went to war. I don’t think anyone here is under 15.

“The one thing my uncle said was (in war) you’d be up for hours at a time and you would push your body further than you ever thought you could. And then when we went into Belleville, that was the comment. I said, you know when you’re at war you push your body to limits you never thought was possible. Then I said in these playoffs, we need to push ourselves to areas that our bodies have never been to. So tiredness, you have to overcome. The guys that are successful and have a long career keep pushing their bodies further than they thought was possible.

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“If (the 67’s) can find those extra gears, that’s what get you through the next couple of rounds, knock on wood.”

The “war paint” on their faces was their battle cry.

“I said I don’t know what you guys use, but we originally used Sharpies, and the trainer said, ‘what happens if it doesn’t come off?’. I said, who gives a f – – k if it doesn’t, we’re going to war,” remembered Konopka. “At a certain point, we actually burned some stuff and put ash on our face too. But the whole thing about it was not to worry about anything else but the war you’re in, and how far can you push your body, because there’s no time for excuses. There’s no time to be soft. It’s just like you’re fighting for your life and you’re playing for your life and you’re playing for your careers.

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“When we went on the run, and you start getting momentum, it’s about not letting down the guy next to you and the guy across from you. When you put the war paint on, you look into their eyes, and you understand that you’re not going to let that guy down and that guy’s not going to let you down.

“The biggest thing is, is you’ve got to believe you can win first. Twenty-three years ago no one (from the outside) thought we could win, and probably rightfully so, but there wasn’t anyone in our room who thought we were going to lose. No chance.”

For an example of sacrifice needed, Konopka spoke of Vadim Sozinov, a winger selected by the 67’s in the European draft and Toronto Maple Leafs prospect who scored 21 goals and 39 points in 57 games during his one and only season in North America.

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“I told them we had a guy from Kazakhstan who, when he came to us, was a very selfish player,” said Konopka. “He’d worry about himself, and I said (to the team), you guys have to understand, when you come from a communist country, his parents, they waited in line for bread. You understand why they’re kind of selfish. And he became part of our team.

“Back then it was touch icing, and when we played Game 6 of the finals (against Plymouth), Sozinov skated and dove headfirst to negate icing. He separated his shoulder and we didn’t have him or (Joe) Talbot in the Memorial Cup but that was the best example to describe our team. Our European, our selfish European, got so bought in that he sacrificed his shoulder to negate an icing late in the game, and who knows what happens if he doesn’t do that? Maybe they come back and win.”

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And maybe the 67’s don’t go to Regina.

“The talk (to the 67’s at the Pinelli house) went better than I thought it would,” said Konopka. “I didn’t know what to expect because, you know, you’ve got 20 guys in a basement, and I didn’t know how serious they would take it. But they took it super serious, which was nice.”

They sure did.

Since the Konopka speech, the 67’s have won three straight games.

They took Game 2 by a convincing 6-3 count, then returned home for a 5-2 victory in Game 3 on Tuesday and a wild, 6-5 Game 4 victory in Game 5 at TD Place on Thursday.

In that one, the Bulldogs played desperate hockey in an attempt to even the series and avoid getting pushed to the brink of elimination.

They outshot Ottawa 42-29. They led 3-1 into the last minute of the middle period before defenceman Sam Mayer scored his second of the night to give the 67’s some momentum heading into the third.

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The 67’s erupted for three goals (by Henry Mews, Bradley Horner and Will Gerrior) during an eight minute and 16 second span of the third period, but couldn’t hold the 5-3 lead.

Brantford fought back on goals with 2:53 and 56 seconds remaining to tie it up, and it certainly felt like only a matter of time before the visitors ended things in the extra period.

But Mayer, who already had a “Gordie Howe Hattrick” with a fight and an assist on the scoresheet, scored his third of the game 10:23 into overtime with a seeing-high snap shot from the point that made its way through a crowd and settled in the back of the net.

Following the celebration, with the one black mark on their left cheek smeared by sweat, 67’s players spoke of the inspiration they took from the Konopka speech.

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“The (’01 team) had relatives back in the day who fought in the war, so they kind of took the message of how they put their bodies on the line, so they wanted to put their bodies on the line for one another,” said Pinelli.  “They used Sharpie markers.  Since I’ve been here we’ve done that a little with a chalk or something, but when he gave us that speech, we switched it that next game. Now we’re going to roll with Sharpies because that’s how it was before.”

Mews bought into the message as much or more than anyone.

“It’s not just playoffs,” he said. “We’re going to war. We’re playing for each other, our teammates. I think (Konopka’s speech) was huge. It fired us up. We understand now we’re playing for the guy beside us in the dressing room. We’re going to war. We call it war instead of playoffs. Yeah, it was huge.”

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“They’ve owned us for the whole year,” Mews added of the Bulldogs. “We said ‘enough’. That speech definitely fired us up and helped us a lot. So I think yeah, that’s our mentality right now, which is helping us a lot.”

It’s a wave they need to ride into Brantford for Saturday’s 4 p.m. face off, Konopka believes. If a Game 6 is necessary, it will be Sunday evening (7 p.m.) at TD Place.

“You have someone on the ropes, you need to end it,” said Konopka. “We did a good job of that. It’s nice to be coming home (for a Game 6) and you get your matchups, but if you don’t end it they can come back with a vengeance. They need to push their bodies. Ottawa needs to be ready at the drop of the puck in the first, because you could lose the game in the first if you’re not ready to go to war.

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“If you’re ready to go to war and you can get over the first tied or ahead, then doubts start to creep (into Brantford’s) minds. Soon as you put doubts in their minds, then you’re going to finish them. That first period it’s going to be a helluva period.

“You knew (Brantford’s) best game was going to come Thursday,” concluded Konopka. “You knew it and you survived it. There are games we had to survive in our run. We played really good teams and we survived. These guys did it on Thursday and they have to do it again. On (Saturday) they need to effing knock them out.”

dbrennan@postmedia.com

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