Knights forward John Tavares celebrates after his pass was converted into a goal. (Morris Lamont/London Free Press/Canadian Press)The home rink and uniform were new but the results for John Tavares were much the same Sunday as he made his debut with the Ontario Hockey League's London Knights.
Acquired from Oshawa in a trade Thursday, the former Generals captain scored twice and added an assist to lead the Knights in a 7-3 victory over the Mississauga St. Michael's Majors.
"It was nice to get one early," Tavares said after playing with a wide array of wingers. "There are a lot of great players here, and getting used to them will take some time."
Both goals, scored before a near-capacity crowd of 9,070 at the John Labatt Centre, were of the exceptional variety.
Tavares opened the Knights' scoring midway through the first period with a goal-scorer's goal that was the essence of anticipation and execution.
Swooping behind the Mississauga net, the rangy centre pounced on a puck that had nestled against the bottom of the goal inches from the post. With a deft high-speed move, he pulled the puck away from the metal and tucked it in.
His second score came while the Knights were killing a penalty in the second period. Winger Nazem Kadri fought off a Majors defenceman while powering into the Mississauga zone and got the puck over to Tavares one-handed, and his new teammate buried it.
Tavares's assist was a thing of beauty. After a clever puck-to-skate-to-stick manoeuvre as he bore down on the Mississauga defence, he got the puck to Michael Del Zotto — traded with him by Oshawa — and he put it into the back of the net.
Tavares won 16 of 20 faceoffs, killed penalties and stole a few pucks in nearly 20 minutes of ice time — a workload that will increase in coming games.
Knights head coach Dale Hunter thinks it will take some time before he settles on a combination that he likes best for the youngster, widely forecast to be the No. 1 draft pick at the NHL entry draft in June in Montreal.
"We tried him with everyone; we'll see who works best with him," Hunter said. "I know when we played against him, I had to have somebody just follow him around."
Jared Knight, Tucker Hunter, Vladimir Roth and Matt Clarke also scored for the Knights, who raised their record to 32-8-0-1 and return to the ice Thursday against Kitchener.
Casey Cizikas, Jared Gomes and Rob Flick replied for Mississauga (22-17-1-1).
Tavares is expected to return to Oshawa for the Top Prospects game on Wednesday night.
With files from the Canadian Press
