Photo Eric Verbonac

Coming off a 4 – 1 loss to open the 2022 Central Region Championships in Toronto, Ontario on Monday, April 4th to the reigning 2019 Telus Cup U18 AAA champions, the Greater Toronto Hockey League Toronto Young Nationals, the (0-1) Soo U18 Greyhounds took to the ice on Tuesday, April 5th for game two of the championships against the GTHL (1-0) Mississauga Reps. The Reps were coming off a 4 – 1 win over the Guelph Gryphons on day one.

60 seconds into the game, Kristian Lamanna slides an unassisted goal from the right of Greyhound netminder Charlie Burns net to give Mississauga a 1 – 0 lead. At the nine-minute mark of the second period, Cooper Lee rifles a snapshot from the left faceoff circle under Burns’ left arm to give the Reps a 2 – 0 lead. Michael Cesario had the lone helper on Lee’s goal. To the left of the Soo net and Burns covering the right post, Jake Mallory finds an empty side of the Greyhound net for a Mississauga unassisted goal to increase the Reps lead to 3 – 0 at 11:08. Scoring his second of the game, Lamanna sinks the Reps fourth at 14:49 from the top of the right faceoff circle to bring the lead to 4 – 0. Drew Perkins notched the assist on Perkins’ goal.

To the right of Mississauga’s net, Connor Chow – Lynn pulls the Soo within three at 17:26 of the middle stanza with the lone Greyhound goal of the period behind Rep goaltender Sam Buonaguro. Adrian O’Dell registered the contributor on Chow – Lynn’s goal. With Mississauga shorthanded, Zachary Christie breaks in on Greyhound netminder Terry See to find the back of the net unassisted at 9:26 of the third to give the Reps a 5 – 1 lead. With 41 seconds remaining in Tuesday’s contest, Dylan Coyle picks up a loose puck in front of See’s net to lift the sixth goal over the Soo netminder’s catcher to give the Reps a 6 – 1 win. Mason Clarke had the assist on Coyle’s goal.

Greyhound coach Jamie Henderson told Saultsports that “we did most of the damage to ourselves today costly turnovers were really the difference. We played better in spurts, but we just didn’t manage pucks well enough to gain any momentum. Charlie was once again great today and Terry in relief was as well, we lost Austin Fellinger early in the first and our young back end really picked up the slack Evan Roach, Gage Evans and Anthony Blonda really took a step tonight against a much older team.”

“Like all our losses we try to learn from it and what we learned tonight was we need to be better around the blue lines. As a team we need to reduce our turnovers in those areas to be successful against these types of teams,” said Greyhound defenseman Sam Verbonac.

The 0-2 Greyhounds will now face the 0-2 Huron Perth Lakers on Wednesday, April 6th in a 3:00 p.m afternoon matinee in Toronto.