Head coach David Matsos called the last two games 'character builders' for a young Wolves team as Sudbury battled back Friday night from a two-goal deficit to force overtime.
But a blistering wrist shot by Garrett McFadden gave the Guelph Storm a 4-3 win.
“Disappointment, yeah, we’re all disappointed we didn’t get the two tonight, but the battle, the compete, the manage to stay focused at the task at hand in a 60-minute game, I thought the guys did a real good job,” said Matsos.
Sudbury was down 2-0 after one period and down 3-2 after two, so to come back and pick up a point made the head coach happy after the game.
“We put an effort like that forward, win, lose or draw I can accept it,” Matsos said. “I always want to fall on the winning side of things, but all you can ask of these guys is bring forth an honest hardworking effort and I felt they did that tonight.”
The Wolves out shot Guelph 43-35 and Matsos said they dominated in the chance category, as well.
“I thought we were managing pucks well -- we filtered a lot of pucks to the net,” he said. “When I go back and look, out of 40 something shots, 20 of them we counted were in that grade A area, you take those games any night and I think we only gave up eight in grade A spots.
“This is a team that has to run on virtually all cylinders to be a good hockey team, I’d say 90 per cent of these guys were putting in a good effort.”
Patrick Sanvido made his Wolves home debut after being acquired in a trade from Windsor earlier this week. He was put right into action on Thursday against North Bay and said he is coming along fine, but the former captain of the Spitfires said it might be a week or two before he feels really comfortable.
“I don’t know if there is a set time to gel with teammates, probably going to take a bit more time, just getting used to the systems,” Sanvido said. “There are similar things that we did in Windsor, it’s just slight differences that make a big difference. It’s going to take probably a good week of practice would be helpful to learn the systems.
“Otherwise it’s been great, there’s a lot of good guys in that room, there’s some guys that I’ve done some battle with when they played in London but there’s no bad blood they’ve been great guys.”
Sanvido liked what he saw from the players on his new team.
“Down 2-0 after the first wasn’t ideal, but I think that we were playing well and it was just a lucky bounce on their second goal and the first was a good shot. We felt good with our game at that point, we knew we had to keep at it and eventually it would come and it did. It was a good effort from the team.”
The Wolves were coming off a 3-2 overtime win in North Bay on Thursday night, while Guelph beat Saginaw 4-3 in overtime Wednesday. So it was only fitting the two sides made it an overtime game on Friday night.
Overtime was slower paced three-on-three contest with the first chance going to Garrett McFadden, who made no mistake with a wrist shot from the left slot the ended the game 1:16 in.
With the point and the Battalion idle, the Wolves are now tied for first in the Central Division.
Sudbury heads to Barrie tonight night for a New Year's Eve showdown, before going on the road the following weekend for a three-game Western swing.
But the team will not look past their Central Division rivals.
“It’s a big game tomorrow, if we can get five out of six points this weekend it’s a pretty good weekend and we can get that second spot in the standings,” said Bulitka.
