The Sudbury Wolves had a great start to the 2008-09 season defeating the Oshawa Generals 7-4 on home ice at the Sudbury Arena Friday evening.
John Kurtz kicked things off, scoring a goal one minute into the first period. Oshawa Generals Robert Kousal evened things out on a power play. Then the lead was back to the Wolves with Kurtz scoring his second goal of the night, followed by goals by J.K. Gill and Dean Howard to finish off the the first period.
Howard netted the puck with 0.2 seconds left in the first period, sending fans into an uproar.
"That was a good play, it capitalized with a couple of seconds to go in the period which I think picked our bench up even more," said head coach and general manager Mike Foligno.
Foligno noted that the Oshawa Generals are a good scoring team, and with someone like John Tavares out there, they knew that they would have have to score more than just a couple of times.
"I thought that tonight we stayed true to the way we've been playing from the start of the season, and the start of the exhibition series and that is to put pucks in the net and we've been able to do it again tonight seven times," Foligno said.
The second period cost the Wolves quite a bit with penalty calls giving the Generals the opportunity to score two more power play goals and a short-handed goal. Matt Dias and Patrik Lusnak added to the scoreboard sending the Wolves into the third period with 6-4 lead.
Eric O'Dell gave the fans another excuse to cheer adding another goal to the board with less than 35 seconds left in the game.
"We generated enough offense and that was really pleasing to see tonight," Foligno said.
Howard, who was pleased with his goal at the end of the first period, said the season is looking very positive
"A lot of the guys just worked really hard over the summer and came back a lot more mature, a lot more developed, plus having a guy like John McFarland's really going to help us a lot," he said.
Howard added that the team doesn't want a repeat of last year's season.
"After a year like that, you want to do anything you can to redeem yourself. None of the guys want to go through that again, and we're here to do whatever it takes not to."
The confidence is high among the team after coming off a 3-1 record in the exhibition series and winning the season opener.
"We're playing really well, winning hockey games and hopefully that keeps going." Howard said.
The Sudbury Wolves next game will be Sept. 26 at home against the Barrie Colts. Game time is 7:30 p.m.
