Hounds junket produces trio of wins
by Peter Ruicci (Independent Media) | Photo courtesy of RCAH Sports
These Soo Greyhounds are like territorial dogs.
When they’re on the road, they mark their turf.
On their most-recent trip, the Hounds made it three wins in three tries on Saturday, stopping the Oshawa Generals 6-1 in front of 4,440 at Tribute Communities Centre.
“We’re savages on the road,” said centre Chris Brown, whose club is a sparkling 7-3 away from GFL Memorial Gardens this season and 11-6-1-0 overall. “We want to go into other team’s barns, take over and make them ours.”
“I think they love the challenge,” added head coach John Dean, whose players began this trip on Thursday with an 8-2 victory in Sudbury, before adding a 4-1 decision in North Bay 24 hours later.
The Soo outscored its three opponents by a margin of 18-4.
“Historically, we love being the villains,” Dean said of his club’s road game mindset. “Our record is super impressive – especially with a younger team.”
Notably, when facing the demands posed by away games “we come together as a group and play really well as a team,” added defenceman Chase Reid, who notched a pair of power-play goals and an assist.
The Hounds largely unproductive power play took a major step forward on Saturday, converting three times – a season high – in six attempts.
“I’m really happy. We made a couple of small tweaks today,” Dean began. “It looked very deliberate with excellent puck movement creating some excellent opportunities for Chase and Marty (Brady Martin).”
The coach went on to explain how Jakub Winkelhofer, who was exceptional with a goal and three assists, ran the top of the power play just inside the blue-line “allowing Chase to go downhill, where he’s a huge threat with his slapshot” and his ability to find the bumper man or make a backdoor feed.
“And the opposition has to respect Brady Martin on the other side,” the coach added.
Martin finished with a goal and two assists.
Meantime, the most-impressive goal for the visitors came off the stick of Martin, the Soo’s captain.
With the Hounds on the power play while up 3-0 early in the third period, Martin began the rush from inside his own blue-line. He sped down the left wing untouched and, from a bad angle, slipped the puck between his legs.
From there, he lifted a high shot that went off the mask of Generals netminder Jaden Cholette and past him on the short side.
“Couldn’t believe it. That was incredible,” Dean said of the goal that made it 4-0 at the :23 mark.
“It was insane. I have no words to describe it,” Reid said of his buddy’s second goal in four games since returning from the Nashville Predators.
Martin’s stat line is an impressive 2-8-10.
The visitors opened the scoring with the man advantage at 4:16 of the opening frame.
Reid took a feed from Winkelhofer and, from the top of the right circle, buried one past Cholette high to the glove side.
Midway through the second, Winkelhofer made it 2-0 following a beautiful feed by Harris Pangretitsch. From inside the left circle, the first-year defenceman went high glove to give his team a two-goal cushion.
Eight minutes later, Brown won a defensive-zone face-off and Jordan Charron gobbled up the loose puck. He sped down the right wing, eluded defenceman Anthony Timmerman and went high blocker on a breakaway. That was Charron’s 14th tally.
Eight minutes after the Martin goal, Travis Hayes intercepted an errant Generals pass, fed Noah Laus in front and the Soo rookie went high glove for his fourth of the season.
After Landon Miller made a great glove save to rob Oshawa’s Brooks Rogowski, with four minutes remaining, the home side finally broke the shutout bid.
A bouncing puck eluded Miller, hit the post and bounced in front allowing Anthony Figliomeni to bang one home at 16:27. That made it 5-1.
Reid capped the scoring with his second of the day, and the Soo’s third man-advantage goal. He went glove side from the top of the right circle for his fifth of the season at 19:27.
The loss for Oshawa dropped its record to 5-11-0-0.
“The second and third periods were obviously fantastic for us,” said Dean, whose club outshot Oshawa 28-12 over the final 40 minutes and 33-19 overall. “We were relentless on pucks and owned pucks in the offensive zone. The score, the shot totals and the effort speak for themselves.”
Dean, whose club returns to action on Wednesday with a home game against Flint (7:07 p.m.), spoke of how impressed he was with the work of Miller.
The coach also lauded Winkelhofer, an 18-year-old (2007 birth year) rearguard taken 81st overall in the 2025 CHL Import Draft.
“He’s been incredible for us. He’s probably been our most-consistent player all season long,” Dean said.
“I’m really happy to be in the Sault and to play in this organization,” said Winkelhofer, who loved the way in which his club played so much of Saturday’s game in the offensive zone. “And I’m very happy with how much they believe in me.”
Having skated in 17 games, the native of Kadan, Czech Republic, has a 3-8-11 stat line and a plus-minus of plus-7.
Notes:
For precautionary reasons, rookie Ryan Kaczynski sat out for the second game in a row on Saturday. Dean said the winger has a potential upper-body injury which will be looked at more closely once the club returns home.
