Greyhounds snap winless skid against Sting

With a three-game winless skid in tow, the Soo Greyhounds hosted the Sarnia Sting in Ontario Hockey League action at the Essar Centre on Friday night.

Their lone game of the weekend, the Greyhounds came away with a 5-3 win over the Sting to snap their losing streak, while also ending a three-game winning streak for the Sting in the process.

A pair of third-period goals helped seal the win for the Greyhounds in front of an announced crowd of 4,218.

Greyhounds coach Sheldon Keefe was pleased with the effort of the Greyhounds in the win but there were still some areas of concern as the Greyhounds snapped their winless skid.

“The effort was fine, our execution was not great,” said Keefe. “We’ve got to give Sarnia some credit too. They play a pretty simple style, especially early in the game in the neutral zone. They had four or five guys above the puck a lot. We had to adjust to that. The game opened up a lot, probably too much from our perspective. We weren’t sharp coming out of our end and that caused some problems for us. Even though it was back and forth, we didn’t really spend much time in our end.”

“The biggest thing for me is we didn’t sustain enough offence in the offensive zone,” Keefe continued. “It’s one of the things we talked about before the game. There was a lot of one-and-done type stuff off the rush. That led to the game opening up and a lot of transition going the other way. We wanted to sustain a little more offense deep in their end, especially in the second period.”

Andrew Fritsch had a goal and two assists for the Greyhounds in the win while Jared McCann and Michael Bunting chipped in with a goal and an assist each. David Miller and Kyle Jenkins also scored in the win.

Goaltender Matt Murray, who played in Oshawa on Thursday against Team Russia in the Subway Super Series before travelling back to Sault Ste. Marie on Friday morning, stopped 22 shots in the win.

“He was fine,” Keefe said of Murray. “There were a couple of rebounds left laying in front of him but it’s a challenging thing for a goaltender to come off such a massive event (Thursday), flying in today. We wanted to put him in because he’s a big part of our team. We missed him a lot on Wednesday night. It’s nice to have him back there because he gives us a chance to win every night.”

Despite having their three-game winning streak snapped by the Greyhounds, sting coach Trevor Letowski was happy with the compete level of the Sting in the loss.

“It was a good test for our hockey club,” said Sting coach Trevor Letowski. “We knew that they were a desperate team. It was their only game of the weekend and they’re not used to losing. We knew they would come hard and they usually always do in this building. I liked our compete level.”

Goaltender Taylor Dupuis stopped 27 shots in the loss.

“(Dupuis) gave us some big saves and gave us a chance to win the hockey game,” Letowski said.

“We had a couple of bonehead plays. The third goal hurt and the power play goal, our defenceman lost his stick and we don’t get the puck down the ice and we paid the price for that,” Letowski continued. “We stuck in right to the end and were a resilient team so I liked that. We were right there at the end.”

Nikolay Goldobin had a goal and an assist for Sarnia while defenceman Anthony DeAngelo set up a pair of goals. Vladislav Kodola and Davis Brown also scored for the Sting.

“We rely on them quite a bit,” Letowski said of Goldobin and DeAngelo. “Our secondary scoring has been an issue. (Goldobin) has really started to get going here. He’s really dangerous offensively. He can make guys miss him and look silly. He did that a couple of times tonight. He’s really slippery. DeAngelo is one of the best offensive defencemen in the league. When he’s going, he’s going good. We count on those guys a lot.”

The sting lineup also featured rookie forward, and Sault native, Ryan Vendramin, who saw limited action in the loss.

“We’re bringing him along slowly,” Letowski said of the rookie forward. “I tried to get him a couple of power play shifts. He’s proven he can score at the Jr. B level and we want to see if he can turn that over to our league. He’s getting his feet wet. I haven’t given him a ton of ice but he’s handled himself ok.”

Next up for the Greyhounds is Nov. 27 when they host the Sudbury Wolves.

To view video highlights of Friday's game, click here

To read SooToday.com's live blog of Friday's game, click here

To check out other SooToday.com sports headlines, click here

For a recap of the rest of the action around the OHL on Friday night, click here