Huntsville's Josh Vatri scored in the fourth round of the shootout (the only one of eight shooters to score) to give the hometown Otters a 3-2 shootout win over the Hurricanes Friday night before a jam-packed Jack Bionda Arena.  With the Otter win, the two clubs are now tied for first in the North Conference with each club having only a single game to play in the 2007/08 OPJHL regular season.  In the event of a season-ending tie in the standings, the first tie-breaker is wins, of which Huntsville has one more than the Canes (41-40).

Newmarket (40-6-2) played a text-book road game in the first two periods.  A stout defensive sextet kept Huntsville scoring opportunities to a minimum while, on the rare occasion they got through, the Otters were stymied by more stellar play from netminder Wayne Savage.

The Canes scored the only goal of the first two periods when Chris Leveille scored on the power play in the first period's final minute, with assists going to Todd Hosmer and Adam MacArthur.

Realizing first place was on the verge of being clinched by the Canes, Huntsville picked up the pace in the third.  They brought the home crowd to life, tying the score at 3:01, via the man advantage.  Not to be outdone, Newmarket responded immediately.  Adam Martinez scored at 4:09 with the helper going to K.J. Ramolla.

Huntsville continued to apply pressure, eventually collecting 16 third-period shots.  Shot counts can be deceiving as, to the credit of the Canes defnce corps, a lot of the shots were of the peripheral variety, or "outside of the red zone".

The Otters were eventually able to even the score on a deflection at 14:39, leading to a scoreless five-minute overtime.

In the shootout, Ramolla, Riley Brand, Scott Voisin and Leveille were all stopped by Huntsville goaltender Jeff Dawson.  Savage stopped Huntsvile's first three shooters before Vatri ended the proceedings, roofing a shot on a deke and sending the pro-Otter crowd into a frenzy.

Shots for the game were 39-30 in Huntsville's favour.

The Hurricanes finish off their 2007/08 regular season schedule Saturday night with a trip down the 400 to York University Canlan Ice Sports to take on the Villanova Knights at 7:30pm.  A victory will force Huntsville to beat Aurora Sunday afternoon in Tigertown to take first place.  Many Hurricanes coaching staff and players will be in attendance at the Aurora Community Centre rooting on the Tigers.  Newmarket cheering on Aurora - "who woulda thunk it?"