Photo: Bob Davies
With eight straight losses and coming off a 4 – 3 loss to the Windsor Spitfires on the road on Thursday, February 9th, the fifth place (14-22-8-5) Soo Greyhounds took to the ice on Friday, February 10th to wrap up their two game west division road trip with a stop in Saginaw, Michigan to face the third place (26-20-2) Spirit at the Dow Centre. This Friday contest will the Greyhound fifth meeting of the 2022 – 2023 season where the Soo will be looking for their third win over Saginaw this season.
With a scoreless first period and picking up a loose puck at the Greyhound blueline 11:49 into the the second period, Theo Hill fires a cross crease pass to Matyas Sapovaliv to lift the Spirit’s first goal over Greyhound netminder Charlie Schenkel’s blocker to give Saginaw a 1 – 0 lead. Dean Loukus notched the other helper on Sapovaliv’s 16th of the season. Sault Ste Marie’s Calem Mangone directs a Sebastian Gervais pass behind Schenkel at the 15:50 mark of the period to bring the Spirit’s lead to 2 – 0. Hunter Haight added the second assist on Mangone’s eleventh of the season. With the Soo on a five on three powerplay and scroing his 25th, Kalvyn Watson catches a cross ice pass from Mark Duarte to lift the Greyhounds’ first over Tristan Lennox’s catcher to pull the visitors within one at 17:02. At 18:04, Bryce McConnell-Baker catches a cross crease pass from Marco Mignosa to slide the Greyhounds tying goal sitting down from in front of Saginaw’s net to even the game 2 – 2. Kirill Kudryavstev also contributed on McConnell-Baker 27th of the season.
Saginaw’s Hunter Haight picks up a Ryan Thompson turnover to score his 14th of the season unassisted from between the faceoff circles to sink the Spirit’s third of the game at 9:42 of the third to give the hosts a 3 – 2 lead. With 93 seconds remaining in the contest and Charlie Schenkel on the Soo bench for an extra attacker, Jordan D’Intino picks up a bouncing puck off of a Spirit defenceman to fire a snapshot past Saginaw’s Lennox to tie the game 3 – 3 for the Greyhounds. Bryce McConnell-Baker and Brenden Sirizotti drawing the helpers. After a scoreless three on three overtime, Greyhounds Bryce McConnell-Baker and Mark Duarte had the only goals in the shootout to give the Soo a 4 – 3 win over the Spirit. Saginaw goaltender Tristan Lennox turned away 17 of 20 shots in the Spirit’s loss while Greyhound netminder Charlie Schenkel stopped 30 of 33 shots in the Soo’s shootout win.
The Greyhounds will now return to Sault Ste Marie for a four game homestand that will start on Sunday, February 12th in a 2:07 p.m afternoon matinee against the visiting Sarnia Sting at the Memorial Gardens.
