Two goals over two games for the Sudbury Wolves isn’t going to get it done as Sudbury fell 5-1 on Sunday to the Niagara IceDogs.
The Wolves came into the weekend on a five-game win streak and dropped to 6-4 on the season with the two losses — they also lost 4-1 to the Barrie Colts Friday evening.
“Maybe sometimes there’s a turning point in every season and maybe it was this weekend that we get humbled pretty quickly after three games on the road last weekend,” said Wolves associate coach Darryl Moxam.
It put a complete halt on momentum the Wolves were able to build up and turned aside a crowd of 3,460 on Friday and 2,335 on Sunday.
“Obviously just not good enough, you come off three games on the road and you build up six points on a tough road swing and you come home and you feel a little bit too comfortable and what have you,” Moxam said.
“You kinda let a lot of hard work last weekend fall by the wayside this weekend. When you come home and you score two goals over two games at home it’s just not good enough.
“We’re going to go back to the drawing board. I mean we’ve told our guys, we’re probably not as good as the results last weekend and we’re definitely not as bad as the results this weekend.”
The team turns to a big week of practice before welcoming the defending OHL champion Hamilton Bulldogs to town next weekend.
“We got to come in strong for this week of practice and then get ready for the next two home games,” said Wolves centre Blake Murray. “We got to show this home crowd what we got because we can’t keep winning just on the road.”
Murray had the lone goal for the Wolves on the afternoon as back-up Colton Incze stopped 34 of 35 shots.
“We’re getting the shots, like we had 35 shots(today) I think so we just got to capitalize on our chances and they should keep coming. We didn’t have any problem with it last week,” said Murray.
It was the second straight game the Wolves were beaten by a great goaltending performance. Friday night it was by Jet Greaves for Barrie.
But early turnovers and not being able to clear the zone had a bigger impact on Sunday’s outcome.
“We can’t fault our guys in practice, we’ve all said we have maybe not ever seen a team that works as hard as our guys do in practice,” said Moxam. “It’s not the lack of effort that’s for sure, whether it be youth, whether it be whatever it is, we have to tidy up our mistakes early in games.”
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen got the start despite getting pulled on Friday for Jake McGrath who came in an stopped 13 of 13 shots.
“We didn’t think Ukko was bad (on Friday) there’s no question about it, there’s times you pull a goaltender it’s just to change momentum in a hockey game. It was a chance to get him to bounce back, we wanted to see how he responded,” said Moxam.
The first goal beat Luukkonen over the left shoulder on a shot by Daniel Bukac.
Blake Murray evened the game up at 1-1 off a nice passing play from David Levin and Kirill Nizhnikov.
But just two minutes later Philip Tomasino skated around Peter Stratis and quickly lifted the puck over Luukkonen’s glove.
The killer was the third goal, late in the period Oliver Castleman’s shot was stopped by Luukkonen but it kept trickling into the net.
Castleman would score another and Ivan Lodnia would capitalize on a bad give-away from the Wolves in their own zone.
Sudbury was outshot 18-9 in the first period but rebounded to outshoot the Dogs 14-12 and 12-8 from there out.
Sudbury will play Hamilton on Friday and Kingston on Saturday. Both games go at 7:05 p.m.
