Greyhounds open OHL season with convincing result

It took five minutes for the Greyhounds to get their offensive mojo going.

In the opening five minutes of Friday’s game against the Sarnia Sting for the Greyhounds to open up a 3-0 lead and cruise to a 7-3 win over their West Division rivals in the first game of the Ontario Hockey League season for both clubs.

Defenceman Colton White and linemates David Miller and Blake Speers opened the early-game scoring barrage to pace the Greyhounds to the early lead, which Sergey Tolchinsky increased to four before the end of the opening period.

Greyhounds coach Sheldon Keefe wasn’t pleased with his team despite Friday’s result. The early lead has a tendency to change the game in a few ways according to the coach.

“I didn’t like our game tonight,” said Keefe. “I thought we were the second best team on the ice today.”

“When you get that kind of start, it changes the gameplan, it changes the players mindset, it changes a lot of things,” Keefe added. “As we expected, there are a lot of things we need to do to get better. We looked like a team that hadn’t played very much together.”

For the Sting, the early goals by the Greyhounds deflated the team.

“We had a breakdown early,” said Sting coach Trevor Letowski. “We put a lot of work in over the last few weeks and unfortunately our team couldn’t bounce back after giving up two goals early.”

The Sting coach credited Greyhounds goaltender Brandon Halverson following the loss.

“Our offensive zone play was pretty good,” said Letowski. “We were pushing them a little bit and (Halverson) made some big saves at big times where we could have maybe clawed back in a little bit. He shut the door for them at the right times and closed the game for them.”

Keefe also spoke highly of Halverson, who stopped 37 shots..

“He was really good,” Keefe said of the sophomore netminder. “He got unlucky on the first two goals. The first one was a deflection. The second one makes him look bad but when you go back and watch it on video, he makes the play and our defenceman runs into him so he can’t get back to the net and the player he was playing the puck to (Sergey Tolchinsky) turned his back on the play and didn’t see the puck. Our players didn’t help him out on that one.”

Miller, Speers and Tolchinsky finished the night with a goal and two assists each while Bryan Moore also had a goal and two assists for the Greyhounds. Colton White, Michael Bunting and Gabe Guertler also scored. Defenceman Kyle Jenkins set up three goals.

“Our guys put the puck away with some pretty good authority,” Keefe said. “On the chances that we did get, we didn’t make any mistake on them.”

Patrick White, Daniel Nikandrov and Nikita Korostelev scored for Sarnia in the loss.

The Greyhounds are back in action Saturday night as they host the Niagara IceDogs in a 7:07 p.m. start.

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OTHER SCORES

In other action around the OHL on Friday night:

Kingston 3, Ottawa 1
Barrie 5, North Bay 4 (OT)
Belleville 6, Guelph 0
Kitchener 4, Owen Sound 3 (SO)
Plymouth 5, London 0
Mississauga 5, Oshawa 4 (OT)
Sudbury 3, Niagara 1
Erie 5, Windsor 2

(PHOTO: Soo Greyhounds forward Blake Speers celebrates a goal September 26, 2014 during the team's home opener against the Sarnia Sting. The Greyhounds went on to win the game 7-3 at the Essar Centre in Sault Ste. Marie)

To review SooToday's Live Blog of Friday's game, click here

For highlights from Friday's game, click here