It was a better effort for the Sudbury Wolves on Friday night, but the losing streak is up to five and the scoring woes continue.
With the 3-1 loss to Hamilton, the Wolves have scored just seven goals over the losing skid.
“You’re not going to win a lot of games in this league scoring one goal,” said Wolves Head Coach David Matsos.
It may be time to bring out the grit.
“I said to our guys tonight, it might have to be old school. I’m talking right in the paint, two guys. If a goalie can’t see it, he can’t stop it. I liked a lot of what we did, but I still think we can create a lot more traffic in front of goalies in this league,” said Matsos.
Matsos spoke at length at the beginning of the year when the Wolves were in first in the Eastern Conference that, the team can’t get too high on the highs and too low on the lows.
This is a time where he hopes the team battles out of it as a unit.
“The key is you got to stick together as a team. I find over time, as a coach and as a player, often times these guys want to get us going. You find guys starting to do more things individually rather than team orientated. I think that’s the most important thing for us is to keep these guys using each other, sharing the puck, playing as a unit and not just as an individual,” said Matsos.
With the loss the Wolves fall to 9-12-1-0 still in playoff spot, but falling.
Wolves forward Liam Dunda thinks it’s still a confident group but one that needs a few bounces.
“I don’t think confidence is an issue, I think it would be more frustration. The bounces that usually find their way into the back of the net just aren’t going in,” said Dunda.
Coming off a 8-2 loss to Barrie on Thursday Michael Pezzetta thought it was a good rebound game.
“I thought we had a pretty good game, just a few defensive breakdowns that led to goals that cost us the game. I think all in all we’re playing good hockey we just got to get some bounces going our way,” said Pezzetta.
The coaching staff felt the same.
“I don’t think we played a bad game to be honest. I haven’t seen a team go ice cold like this for a long time. The message to these guys is last night wasn’t an enjoyable game for anybody to be a part of. Tonight we played a lot better, we played a lot cleaner, we held a good team to very few scoring chances,” said Matsos.
The positive in a five game losing streak is aside from the blowout in Barrie, every outing has been a one or two goal game with a couple empty net tallies, against very good competition.
“In these last five games, we played the London Knights, we played the Oshawa Generals, we played the Erie Otters, and Hamilton. We played some top teams and they’ve been good hockey games and we’ve hung around. We got to find a way to fall on the other side of the fence, but apart from last night we haven’t been playing bad hockey,” said Matsos.
The first period was a quick one, flying by with no penalties and a lone goal, 15 minutes in by Brandon Saigeon.
The second period looked like Sudbury was going to build the momentum, scoring 30 second into the frame.
Kyle Capobianco stole the puck in the Bulldogs zone, skated to the net staring down the goalie and then he fed Liam Dunda who ripped and one-timer past Kaden Fulcher for his third on the year.
But momentum was stopped there as Trent Fox and Connor Walters scored within 30 second of each other to push the lead to 3-1.
Sudbury had a couple chances to take advantage of a 19th ranked penalty kill, but mustered no more than five shots on four power plays.
The third period went by like the first and the Bulldogs moved to 12-6-3-0.
Hamilton sits third in the Eastern Conference, North Bay is ahead of them because they lead their division.
Sudbury drops to 8th in the East and are tied with Kingston and Niagara.
Kingston is in town for an afternoon game on Sunday and Pezzetta knows it’s a big game both to end the streak and make up some lost ground.
“We don’t want to fall deeper into the slump right now, I think it’s something that we got to get out of. We got to respect Kingston, they’re a good hockey team and I think we just got to come out and play the style of game that we played at the start of the season,” said Pezzetta.
