‘We can’t be getting down’ — Wolves fall 5-1 in North Bay, look to bounce back at home
Game 3 of OHL Eastern Conference semifinal in Sudbury on Tuesday
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Sometimes, you just have one of those nights. What you hope not to do is to have one in Game 2 of a playoff series.
The Sudbury Wolves trailed early and all game against the North Bay Battalion on Saturday and, despite outshooting their division rivals, found themselves on the losing end of a 5-1 decision and down two games in their best-of-seven OHL Eastern Conference semifinal.
Action will shift to Sudbury Community Arena for Game 3 on Tuesday.
“It was definitely a frustrating night,” said Wolves head coach Ken MacKenzie, reached a short time after the final horn at North Bay Memorial Gardens. “It’s been a theme for a little bit, but we’re just having trouble scoring goals five on five. It’s started in the Mississauga series, it’s here, and the boys are getting frustrated. They’re getting their chances, but we’ve got to stick with the game plan, we’ve got to come back.
“We know we can score goals and we know we will. We didn’t want to chase this series by any means, but we have put ourselves in this position now going home, so we’re looking forward to just going back home.”
Kocha Delic scored and Marcus Vandenberg made 25 saves for the Wolves in front of a sellout crowd in the Gateway City.
Sandis Vilmanis, Jacob Therrien, Justin Ertel, Ihnat Pazii and Owen Van Steensel, with an empty-netter, supplied the offence for North Bay and Mike McIvor had another strong outing with 35 saves.
North Bay scored just 24 seconds into the contest, when Vilmanis gathered up a loose puck and fired it past a screened Vandenberg. Sudbury’s netminder made a string of good saves afterward, but couldn’t turn aside Therrien on a breakaway late in the frame.
Things were looking better to start the second as the Wolves had some good pressure in the offensive zone and a string of chances, but couldn’t capitalize on some loose play by the Battalion.
It stayed a two-goal game until early in the third, when Ertel batted a puck out of the air behind Vandenberg and into the Sudbury net. Pazii added to the North Bay lead with an innocent-looking shot off the wing that Sudbury’s netminder tried to glove down, but missed.
“These guys that we have, they’e good players,” MacKenzie said. “We can’t be getting down, we can’t be getting frustrated. North Bay, everything they shoot seems to be going in the net right now, but we’re going to get one of those games to turn things around here. We just need that spark.
“Falling behind early in the game is something we talked about. We didn’t want it to happen and when it does, you have to play a different game, but it was 2-0 going into the third period and we were still there, that one shot away, one goal away from it being a one-goal game and we just have to find a way to generate that offence.”
MacKenzie and company hoped to do so when Dalyn Wakely took a hooking penalty with 7:46 remaining in regulation and they decided to pull Vandenberg early. But a power play that had looked uncharacteristically out of sync for much of the evening went offside, allowing Van Steensel a free shot at the empty net to put the game out of reach.
Delic buried a rebound on another power play with just over four minutes remaining, but it elicited little in the way of celebration from the veteran forward or his teammates.
“These guys have a lot of pride and they don’t like losing,” MacKenzie said. “I don’t think anybody saw this coming, us being down 2-0 in the series, as good as North Bay is. We expected more, we want more and we will get more. There’s nothing we can do about the first two games now. We just have to look forward to Game 3.
“We’ve got to stay positive, we’ve got to stay connected and we will be.”
Tuesday’s contest is scheduled to start at 7:05 p.m. Game 4 of the series is in Sudbury on Thursday, also at 7:05.
“This is a tough building to play in and their fans were a big part of it,” MacKenzie added. “I know our fans will be the same. We have the best fans, we said that from the start, and we’re going to need their support behind us coming back for Game 3.”
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