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Steelheads roll past Wolves on Sudbury Saturday Night

Wolves drop 6-2 decision to division-leading Steelheads

The Mississauga Steelheads beat Peterborough 10-1 on Friday night and kept the offence rolling against Sudbury on Saturday, taking down the Wolves 6-2.

While it was a four goal loss, after the game Head Coach David Matsos was not talking too much about how Mississauga played or what Sudbury could have done better.

“It’s hard enough to play against a team and then when you start playing against the refs as well, it becomes even tougher. Everybody’s human and off nights happen, but I thought we were six on five all night, we were battling two teams out there,” said Matsos. 

Sudbury was up against two five on three penalties in the first period, overall the Steelheads were 2/7 on the man advantage while Sudbury was 0/6.

“Two five on threes, I don’t know, and then the game’s out of hand in third period and we get tripped behind the net while we’re on the power play and there’s no five on three call. Penalties are penalties and the penalties that we get I accept them, but I just like to see it come both ways. There was a lot of time on the kill tonight, and two five on threes in the first period, I haven’t seen that in a long time,” said Matsos.

On Friday night the Wolves were able to use a strong second period to take over the game, scoring three unanswered against Barrie, en-route to a 6-5 win.

But the second on Saturday saw the opposite with Mississauga scoring three unanswered which allowed them to pull away for good.

“They just got some quick ones on us and we kind of broke apart and you can’t let that happen when we’re coming down the stretch here with 10 games left in the season. There’s nothing else to say, we just can’t let that happen,” said C.J. Yakimowicz.

With the loss Sudbury drops to 23-28-7-0  with 53 points, still good enough for 6th in the Eastern Conference.

However Ottawa beat Hamilton and North Bay topped Saginaw meaning Ottawa is three points behind Sudbury and North Bay moved into a tie with Niagara for 8th with 48 points.

MacKenzie Savard got the start for the Wolves but was pulled after giving up six goals on 23 shots.

Jake McGrath stopped 16 of 16 when he came in.

Despite being upset after the game Matsos said team analytics showed they didn’t play too bad of a first and second period and will be able to pick out some good points on film.

“Bright spot, McGrath came in and looked good when he had too and didn’t give up anything. We ride some positives out of this, I’ll be able to dig some positives out of it for sure. My frustration doesn’t come within that dressing room, I’m frustrated with other people,” said Matsos.

The Wolves won’t have too much time to think about the loss, as in less than 24 hours they will be on the ice against the Steelheads.

“We obviously know what we’re up against, that’s a good team and they took advantage of the situation tonight. Are we capable of hanging around with them, yeah we are, absolutely, so we hit the reset button, we got to get on the bus right now we got a 2:00, I can’t wait for 2:00 to come tomorrow. I don’t know what the fate is going to be, but I’m glad that we don’t have to wait a full five, six days of practice to get back out there,” said Matsos.

Yakimowicz thinks the key will be getting them off their game early.

“They’re a skilled team, they scored 10 against Peterborough and then six against tonight, so we got to play our game and not fall into their skill game, just hit, hit, hit and I think we’ll be fine for tomorrow,” said Yakimowicz.

Michael McLeod, who had six points including three goals in Peterborough put up another two goals and three points tonight, giving him nine points in his last two games and nine points in four games against Sudbury.

Former Wolves defenseman, Stefan LeBlanc picked up four points, a goal and three assists.

On the home side, Macauley Carson picked up his 25th of the season.

Darian Pilon scored his 12th on a beautiful individual effort where his brother Drake passed it to him near centre ice, Darian tipped it ahead passed the defense and beat Matthew Mancina five-hole.

In the first period Sudbury was down 2-0 3:32 in, but battled back to tie the game 2-2.

Nicolas Hague scored the third before the first period ended to make it 3-2 and the rest you know.

Sudbury will be on the road for a while with five straight away from the Sudbury Arena before facing Barrie on March 10.


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