Greyhounds clinch playoff spot in shootout loss (Updated)

Despite a shootout loss, the Soo Greyhounds will be back in the Ontario Hockey League playoffs despite a 5-4 shootout loss to the Sudbury Wolves on Wednesday night at the Essar.

The shootout loss gave the Greyhounds the single point they needed to secure a post-season berth.

Greyhounds coach Sheldon Keefe expressed his disappointment with the Greyhounds effort at times in the loss.

“The execution and effort from some of our older players just wasn’t there,” said Keefe. “Our younger guys working hard can only get us so far. We weren’t even close to good enough. They outworked us. (Sudbury) came in short-staffed and we talked about the fact that all (the Wolves) were going to do was work hard and find any way to get points here and our guys played with no urgency.”

Jared McCann led the way for the Greyhounds with a goal and three assists in the loss. Sergey Tolchinsky added a pair of goals for the Greyhounds while Andrew Fritsch also scored.

Greyhounds goaltender Matt Murray stopped 29 shots in the loss.

“He made some big saves but in general I thought he fought the puck,” said Keefe of Murray.

The game was the second of a four-game suspension for Nick Cousins, who served game one of the four-game ban on Thursday.

“Clearly we missed him a lot,” said Keefe. “Our younger players didn’t miss him. They played hard and they worked. It really seemed like our older players were looking over their shoulders as if (Cousins) was going to come over the boards and rescue them at some point.”

For the Wolves, Nicholas Baptise, Dominik Kubalik, Jacob Harris and Michael Kantor scored for the Wolves. Goaltender Taylor Dupuis stopped 42 shots for the Wolves in the win.

“We talked about our game plan being on the right side of pucks and we know that (the Greyhounds) are so good that we had to outwork them. I liked our work. We had to work and we did that.”

Cull went on to added that special teams helped the Wolves in the win

“Our power play helped our flow,” said Cull. “We didn’t get a power play goal but we generated a lot of offense and scored right at the end of one. It got us back to getting some flow back into our game.”

The Greyhounds now return to action on Friday night when they host the Guelph Storm.

For full details from all of Wednesday's games, click here 

Photo Courtesy JIm Egan