In an afternoon matinee in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, the first place (13-9) Soo Greyhounds hit the ice at the Memorial Gardens for their final home game of 2021 to host the fifth place (10-9-1) Saginaw Spirit in a west division Ontario Hockey League contest.
At 3:32 of the opening period, Ian Phillips finds the back of Greyhound netminder Samuel Ivanov’s net through traffic from inside the blueline with a shot through Ivanov’s five hole to give Saginaw a 1 – 0 lead. Owen Allard fires a shot on Saginaw goaltender Andrew Oke’s net to be tipped by Greyhound Ethan Montroy behind Oke to even the game 1 – 1 at the 10:21 mark of the first. Caeden Carlisle had the second assist on Montroy’s first Ontario Hockey League career goal. With the Soo on powerplay at 12:51, Bryce McConnell-Barker catches a cross crease pass from Robert Calisti to give the Greyhounds a 2 – 1 lead, Kirill Kudryavtsev notched the other helper on McConnell-Barker’s tenth on the season. Sault Ste Marie native, Camryn Baber ties the game 2 – 2 for the Spirit at 16:04 with Sebastin Gervais drawing the lone contributor on Baber’s seventh of the season.
With a tic tac toe play from the left side of Saginaw goaltender Andrew Oke’s net, Tanner Dickinson sends pass to the right post of the Spirit net to Cole MacKay than to Tye Kartye for his 20th of the season at 6:39 of the middle stanza. Robert Calisti catches a cross ice pass from Rory Kerins to fire the Soo’s fourth pass Oke to bring the lead to 4 – 2 at the 12:51 mark of the period. Marco Mignosa fires the fifth goal of the game for the Greyhounds from the left faceoff circle for his fifth of the season to increase the hosts lead to 5 – 2. McConnell-Barker and Marc Boudreau set up Mignosa’s goal at 15:30. With 67 seconds remaining in the period, Dickinson circles around Oke’s net to find an opening between the Saginaw goaltender left post and pad to give the Soo a 6 – 2 lead heading into the second intermission. Kerins and Jacob Holmes has the assists on Dickinson’s tenth of the game. With his second of the game and all alone in the left faceoff circle, Dickinson fires a slapshot under Oke’s left pad to give the Soo a 7 – 2 win at 7:38 of the final period. O’Rourke and Kerins contributed on Dickinson powerplay goal. Saginaw goaltender Andrew Oke stopped 26 of 33 in the loss while Soo netminder Samuel Ivanov turned away 14 of 16 shots in the Greyhounds third straight win.
The Greyhounds hit the road for a possible three game road trip to North Bay and Sudbury over the December 9 – 12 weekend with a Thursday, December 9th matchup in North Bay (7:05 p.m) before possibly moving on to Sudbury on Friday, December 10th (7:05 p.m) and an afternoon matinee on December 12th for a 2:07 p.m puck drop depending on COVID restrictions in Sudbury.
Photo: Bob Davies
