Photo Credit: Freeze Frame Photos
Coming off a narrow 4-3 loss in Saginaw on Wednesday, March 18th, the fifth-place Soo Greyhounds (38-22-1-5) returned home to the Memorial Gardens on Friday, March 20th looking for a bounce-back performance against the eighth-place Saginaw Spirit (26-33-3-4). With the Spirit holding a 4-3 edge in the season series, the Greyhounds delivered a statement effort in front of their home crowd, skating to a convincing 5-1 victory.
The Greyhounds opened the scoring midway through the first period. At 11:35, Brady Martin netted his 7th goal of the season, assisted by Jordan Charron and Marco Mignosa, to make it 1-0. Soo struck again just under two minutes later, as Spencer Evans scored his 2nd of the season at 13:12, with assists from Noah Laus and Brady Smith, giving the Greyhounds a 2-0 lead heading into the intermission.
Soo blew the game open early in the second period with a dominant stretch of offense. Just 50 seconds in, Brady Martin scored his second goal of the game and 8th of the season on the powerplay, assisted by Jeremy Martin, extending the lead to 3-0. The Greyhounds continued to capitalize with the man advantage at 1:59, as Quinn McKenzie buried his 21st of the season, with assists from Colin Fitzgerald and Jakub Winkelhofer, making it 4-0. Less than two minutes later, at 3:22, Callum Croskery added his 3rd goal of the season, assisted by Travis Hayes and Jakub Winkelhofer, pushing the score to 5-0.
Saginaw broke the shutout bid early in the third period when Nikita Klepov scored his 37th of the season at 2:04, assisted by Egor Barabanov and Levi Harper, but that would be as close as they would get.
In goal, Carter George was solid for the Greyhounds, turning aside 19 of 20 shots in the win. For Saginaw, Stephan Shurygin made 29 saves on 34 shots before being relieved by Kaleb Papineau, who stopped all 10 shots he faced in relief.
With the victory, the Greyhounds cap off a strong response performance and will now look ahead to closing out their 2025–2026 regular season with a Sunday afternoon matinee on March 22nd, with puck drop set for 2:07 p.m. at the Memorial Gardens.
