Sudbury’s Spirits high after ending long road trip with a win

The long bus ride back to Sudbury from Saginaw will be a positive one for the Sudbury Wolves as they were able to come away with four of a possible six points over their three game road swing.

Sudbury doubled up the Saginaw Spirit 6-3 last night giving the Pack their second straight win.

“We were definitely more disciplined. I thought we did a better job getting pucks behind the net and working off cycles and fore-check. A little bit of turbulence in the second by not doing that but I just thought our guys limited the turnovers had a very good start right from the first shift of the game, kind of just snowballed in a positive way the rest of the way through,” said Wolves Head Coach David Matsos.

It was another great start for the Wolves as Mikkel Aagaard got the lone goal of the first period with assists from Ryan Valentini and Reagan O’Grady.

It was Aagaard’s second goal of the road trip, and Matsos thought he was one of their better players over that time.

“I think I could probably argue for a few guys but I think (Aagaard) was a force, hardworking, logged a lot of minutes every single night. He got the OT goal (against Flint) and the first goal tonight. He’s just a consistent player,” said Matsos.

Sudbury added two more unanswered goals in the second period. David Levin scored his seventh on the year and Matt Schmalz buried his ninth.

Saginaw found the score sheet at the 17:17 mark of the second but Sudbury enjoyed the three goal cushion, so Patrick Murphy netted his 10th on the year with under a minute to go in the period.

Heading into the third Sudbury led 4-1.

Saginaw put up some fight in the third scoring early to close the gap at 4-2.

Kyle Capobianco scored his sixth before Saginaw got one more.

Wolves Captain Danny Desrochers iced the game with an empty net goal as time wound down.

The night before, Sudbury got five goals from five different skaters and this night was no different as six different Wolves players added to goal totals with 12 different Sudbury skaters picking up points.

“We’ve been asking for secondary scoring and help in that column and a lot of guys touched the board this weekend, it was real good for those guys,” said Matsos.

The one negative perhaps was that Sudbury was outshot once again, on this night 41-28.

Troy Timpano was back in net despite Zack Bowman stopping 51 shots the night before for the win.

The call paid off as Timpano stopped 38 of 41 shots to improve his record to 8-14-0-1 on the year.

“I know a lot of people are probably asking why, but sometimes you have to do these things on a gut feeling. I had a good feeling Timps (Timpano) was going to come out, answer the bell and redeem himself from Thursday night in Windsor,” said Matsos.

These two teams only play each other twice a season and there won’t be a great deal of time between the games as Saginaw will head up to Sudbury next Friday, Feb. 12, which is Sudbury’s next game.