Greyhounds double up IceDogs in St. Catharines (Updated)

A quick start helped the Soo Greyhounds on Thursday night as they opened a three-game road trip in St. Catharines.

The Greyhounds led 4-2 through one period en route to an 8-4 win over the Niagara IceDogs in Ontario Hockey League action Thursday night.

The Greyhounds jumped out to a 2-0 lead before the game was five minutes old thanks to goals by Jared McCann and Andrew Fritsch. McCann added a second goal, this one on the power play at 7:42, to make it 3-0.

“We talked about it (before the game) and we got a nice bounce early in the game when it came onto Jared’s stick and he buried it and got us off to a great start,” said Greyhounds coach Sheldon Keefe. “It got Jared off to a fast start as well. He was off to a fast start and didn’t slow down for the whole game. He was just on tonight offensively. It was really fun to watch him shoot the puck and see some of the seams he was finding in terms of finding Sergey around the rink. Those guys are fun to watch and they really sparked our team.”

Carter Verhaeghe scored a pair of goals in the opening period for Niagara while Sergey Tolchinsky had the other Greyhounds goal in the high-scoring opening frame.

Michael Bunting put the Greyhounds up 5-2 in the second period with his eighth goal of the season but the IceDogs used a five-on-three man advantage to cut the lead back down to a pair of goals on an Eric Ming marker midway through the third period. Ming had a pair of goals in the third period while McCann picked up his third of the night for the Greyhounds. Alex Gudbranson and David Miller capped off the win with late goals.

McCann finished the night with three goals and an assist while Fritsch, Bunting and Tolchinsky had a goal and two assists each in the win. Darnell Nurse set up two goals for the Greyhounds.

“Andrew scored a big goal for us in the first period and he made some really nice plays on the power play,” said Keefe. “He did a lot of things that we’re looking for him to do. Also, he was a big part of our penalty kill as well.”

Matt Murray made 32 saves in the win.

“He was solid,” Keefe said of Murray. “On the penalty kill goals, some things were bouncing around on him and there’s not a lot he could have done. It was a tough night to be a goaltender.”

Anthony DiFruscia and Brendan Perlini each had two assists for Niagara in the loss. Verhaeghe had an assist in addition to his two goals.

Keefe talked about the Greyhounds penalty kill high regard as well in the win, despite giving up three power play goals in 10 Niagara power plays.”

“I thought our penalty kill actually did a very nice job tonight,” said Keefe. “We were taxed a little bit near the end because we relied on those guys too much and we had a couple of bad bounces end up in our net.”

The Greyhounds now travel to Erie to take on the Otters on Friday night in a 7 p.m. start.

For full details from the rest of the OHL  games on Thursday night, click here.