Hounds come up short in ‘best game all season’
by Peter Ruicci (Independent Media) | Photo courtesy of Tucker Nadon @tkflixs1
It had all of the earmarks of a hard-fought victory – except for the final score.
“I thought we were incredible tonight. This was our best game all season,” said Soo Greyhounds head coach John Dean, whose team outskated and outworked the Barrie Colts on Saturday, but wound up dropping a 4-2 decision – the Soo surrendered an empty-net tally – in front of 4,156 at Sadlon Arena. “I thought we were the better team tonight and deserved a better fate.”
On a night when the Soo outshot the OHL’s hottest team 44-29, including 20-11 in the final period, second-year winger Travis Hayes spoke of how his team should have prevailed.
“We played well enough to win. There were just a couple of unlucky bounces,” said Hayes, who notched his 14th goal and registered seven shots on Colts netminder Sam Hillebrandt. “We were in their zone pretty much all game. We just needed to bear down more on our chances.”
While his club dropped to 20-28-1-1 heading into Sunday’s 2:05 p.m. start in Oshawa, Dean spoke of the many aspects of the Hounds game he enjoyed.
“This was our most complete game this season. We controlled play, we limited opportunities against,” he said. “I thought we played the same way for 60 minutes.”
Centre Brady Martin, who contributed a goal and an assist and registered eight shots in defeat, also felt he and his teammates did enough to knock off the Eastern Conference leading Colts.
Barrie came in with an 8-0-1-0 mark over its previous nine starts.
“We deserved to win. We competed hard and outworked them,” said Martin. “But that’s a good team over there.”
As they improved to 33-14-2-1, the Colts took advantage of a costly Hounds turnover in the third period.
Tied 2-2, Soo netminder Landon Miller passed the puck to defenceman Chase Reid behind the Hounds goal. But Reid banked the puck off the boards, putting it onto the stick of Barrie’s Owen Van Steensel.
The Colts winger had the open net to shoot at and his goal, at 15:35, put the home side ahead to stay.
It came just 11 seconds after Barrie’s Beau Jelsma tied the game with a power-play marker. Jelsma’s well-placed drive from the slot went bar down, beating Miller on the glove side.
Dean said he spoke to Reid about the miscue after the game, noting how “these things happen. He’s been brilliant for us and we’re super proud of the way he’s played.”
The 17-year-old (2007 birth year) has a 2-24-26 stat line and a plus-minus of plus-8 in just 22 games.
“He’s completely changed our identity since he got here,” Dean said of Reid. “And this is a great opportunity for him to learn.”
With Miller on the bench for a sixth attacker, and the Hounds on the power play, Hillebrandt made a big save of Reid’s blue-line shot with 49.3 seconds left in regulation.
Riley Patterson capped the scoring, making it 4-2 with a short-handed, empty net marker with 22.2 seconds remaining.
The Soo took advantage of a Barrie turnover at the Hounds blue-line late in the opening frame. At 15:45, Martin used Marco Mignosa as a decoy on a 2-on-1 and ripped a shot past Hillebrandt on the glove side from the left circle.
With 48.6 seconds to go in the second period, Emil Hemming, on the power play, fired a one-timer past Miller from the top of the left circle.
At 8:43 of the third, Martin won an offensive draw and Mignosa let fly from the blue-line. Hayes got his stick on the low shot and redirected it home on the glove side.
That gave the Soo a 2-1 lead.
The Hounds finished 0-for-4 on the power play while Barrie was 2-for-3.
“We generated chances and we had some great looks that didn’t go in,” said Dean, whose club saw its hold on the eighth-and-final playoff spot in the Western Conference shrink.
Ninth-place Owen Sound (17-27-3-3) defeated North Bay 4-1 on Saturday to move to within two points of the Soo.
The Hounds are four points back of seventh-place Sarnia (18-22-3-7) and five behind sixth-place Flint (21-24-2-3).
Mignosa contributed a pair of assists to his team-leading points total (22-32-54).
Miller started for the second game in a row in place of injured overage Nolan Lalonde, who suffered a lower-body injury during Thursday’s warmup.
The OA will not be available on Sunday and is listed as day-to-day, pending an examination in the Sault.
Miller “was special tonight,” offered Dean. “Some of the opportunities against him were from high-danger areas. It was a spectacular game by him.”
The coach also spoke of how “it’s obviously very difficult to swallow the result tonight. I’m devastated for our guys. It’s difficult to leave it all out there and not get the result you want. But man, did we look good.”
Dean also said the Hounds should now have an expectation of being in every single game like this one – and to win their share of them.
“We had a clear identity and lots of confidence on the bench and on the ice,” he added.
As for facing Oshawa, another top-flight opponent, Dean said the Greyhounds could face an obstacle overcoming the disappointment of Saturday’s setback.
“But we have a style of play that works,” the coach began, “and when we play it, we stand with the top teams in the league.”
