Offensively, things haven’t been easy for Charlie Hilton this season, but on Wednesday night, it wasn’t that way at all.
The second year forward with the Soo Greyhounds had two goals heading into action on Wednesday and doubled that as a key contributor to a critical win by the Ontario Hockey League club on home ice.
Hilton’s two-goal night included a marker that would hold up as the game winner in a 6-3 victory by the Greyhounds over the Sudbury Wolves at the GFL Memorial Gardens.
Hilton called it a relief to pick up the two goals.
“It feels great to get the monkey off my back,” Hilton said.
Asked about Hilton’s two-goal performance, Greyhounds coach John Dean said he was “so happy” for the forward.
“We’ve been tough on Charlie. We’ve demanded a lot of him,” Dean said. “We keep challenging him everyday to be his best self. We see a lot (of potential). He’s a big body who can move, good skill. We want him to have an impact game in and game out. Hopefully this is something that sparks him.”
“He was on top of pucks. The fact that he chose to shoot the puck on the 2-on-1 tells me that he still has a really good chuck of confidence,” Dean also said of Hilton in the offensive zone Wednesday night. “Once he realizes how to use that big body and he gets on top of pucks quick and takes away time and space, he could be a dangerous threat.”
Both of Hilton’s goals came in the second period, the second of which capped off the Greyhounds rebounding from the Wolves taking a 3-2 lead with 4:25 to go in the middle stanza.
For the Greyhounds, it was also a night in which they came back from a two-goal deficit through one period, a period in which the team wasn’t happy with.
“We played a very slow-paced game in the first period and that’s not something we wanted to do at all,” Dean said. “(Sudbury) plays a really good brand of transition hockey. For some reason we were slowing our game down.”
Dean added that the team discussed “pace and predictability” and made some forecheck adjustments to be more aggressive in the first intermission.
“Our D started to move the puck extraordinarily quickly in the second and third periods,” Dean also said. “I’m very happy with our adjustments over the last 40.”
With a 5-3 lead heading into the third period, Dean spoke of the Greyhounds not sitting back in the third period as well.
“As a group, we’ve discussed sticking to it and not backing off,” Hilton said when it comes to holding leads.
For the Wolves, the start was about as good as they could have hoped for, but things changed quickly in period two.
“It was a great first period, but when you turn pucks over and they put them in the net, those are things that are unnecessary,” Barney said. “When they come from older guys, that’s not good either. Our game plan is not putting pucks in the middle of the ice, that’s for sure.”
Barney added that an additional problem was the Wolves reaction as the Greyhounds crawled back into the game.
“When one goal goes in and then two and you have guys shaking their heads, that can be a problem,” Barney said. “Those are the things that we’ve been addressing here from our end as coaches and things we’ll stay on these guys about.”
Sudbury opened the scoring 2:58 into the game as Marshall McCharles scored his first OHL goal, beating Greyhounds goaltender Landon Miller from the left circle after breaking down the left wing.
The Wolves took a 2-0 lead when Nathan Villeneuve found himself in open ice and proceeded to beat Miller with a backhand high glove side on a deke at 8:29.
The home side pulled to within one in the second period as Jordan Charron got into open ice in the slot on an odd man rush, took a pass from Brady T. Smith, and beat Wolves goaltender Nate Krawchuk in close 2:16 into the period.
The Greyhounds then tied the game as Brady R. Smith took a shot from the right wing that was stopped by Krawchuk initially, but Hilton, from the left wing, scored on the rebound at 5:54 to make it a 2-2 game.
Sudbury took a 3-2 lead at 15:35 as Chase Coughlan deflected a point shot by Donovan McCoy past Miller.
On the next shift, the Greyhounds tied the game as Brady Martin beat Krawchuk from the left circle at 16:18 after a chance by Travis Hayes from the right circle was unsuccessful.
The Greyhounds took the lead 59 seconds later when Hilton picked up his second of the night. The forward skated into the Sudbury zone down the left wing on a 2-on-1 and beat Krawchuk from the left circle short side to make it a 4-3 game.
“I felt like there was no pass option and I’ve been working on shooting low more and then shot it low and beat him clean,” Hilton said.
In the third period, the Greyhounds took a 5-3 lead as Chase Reid got the puck in the right faceoff circle and hit Hayes with a back-door pass and the latter deposited the pass into the Sudbury goal at 5:32.
Martin sealed the win with an empty net goal in the final minute of play.
In addition to Hilton’s two-goal night, Martin also scored a pair of goals and assisted on another to finish the night with three points.
Hayes chipped in with a goal and an assist and Marco Mignosa assisted on two goals.
Miller stopped 21 shots for the Greyhounds.
Asked about Miller’s play, Dean credited the veteran netminder in the third period when he wasn’t busy but was forced to make a couple of big saves, including coming cross crease to stop Kieron Walton, to keep the Greyhounds up by a pair of goals at the time.
“That’s a sign that he’s pretty dialed in because it’s very difficult to make those saves when you haven’t seen a lot of action,” Dean said.
Krawchuk made 37 saves for Sudbury.
The Greyhounds are slated to return to action on Friday night at home against the Brampton Steelheads.
The team will take a 24-32-2-1 record into play on Friday and move into seventh in the OHL’s Western Conference standings with Wednesday’s victory.
The Greyhounds sit two points ahead of the Owen Sound Attack and Sarnia Sting, who are currently tied for eighth in the conference after the Attack picked up a win on Wednesday and the Sting lost.
Owen Sound has a game in hand on the Greyhounds while the Sarnia has two games in hand.
Sudbury falls to 26-25-5-0 with Wednesday’s loss.