The Saginaw Spirit didn’t make life easy for the Soo Greyhounds on Saturday night.
Citing Saginaw’s offensive zone movement, Greyhounds coach John Dean said it gave his team “headaches” as the Spirit skated to a 5-0 win Saturday at Saginaw’s Dow Event Center in a battle of division rivals.
“Their movement in the offensive zone gave us a lot of headaches, which makes it look like we’re flat because we’re not getting a lot of opportunity to showcase our speed and transition,” Dean said. “We had too much difficulty in our own end against their movement.”
“We very much struggled in the defensive zone,” Dean also said. “(Saginaw) looked like a hungrier team in front of our net than we did in front of their net. We gave up some opportunities to get pucks to the paint early and we didn’t have a lot of traffic there or a lot of fight."
“At times we showed well, but at times we were flat, especially in the defensive zone,” added veteran forward Justin Cloutier, adding that he felt the Greyhounds were puck-watching at times defensively.
Saginaw came out of the gate early and put the Greyhounds behind just over four minutes into the contest and outshot the visitors 15-6 through the opening 20 minutes en route to the win.
“We try to outshoot other teams early on and we didn’t do that,” Cloutier said. “To get outshot like that isn’t ideal and does take a toll on the rest of the game.”
“Our zone was very difficult tonight,” Dean said. “We were swimming in our zone and when you’re swimming in your zone, you’re not going to exit clean and you’re not going to enter clean and you’re not going to generate a lot of offence. Offence starts from being clean in your own end. That’s a good indicator of the night to come.”
“We got running around,” Dean also said. “They have a lot of movement and we didn’t respond well to that movement. If you respond with structure and work as a unit, you’ll be fine. The big thing we talk about is one man, one job. We looked like a bunch of guys trying to make up for other guys’ mistakes and you end up running around.”
Michael Misa opened the scoring for the Spirit as he got the puck to Kristian Epperson in the Sault zone before going to the net and taking a return feed and beating Charlie Schenkel in the Sault goal to make it a 1-0 game 4:13 into the contest.
The Spirit carried the lead into the second period when Epperson stepped around Caeden Carlisle near the Sault blueline and skated into the right faceoff circle before beating Schenkel 5-hole at 5:08 of the middle stanza to give the Spirit a 2-0 lead.
While on the power play, Saginaw took a 3-0 lead as Misa took a pass in the left faceoff circle from Zayne Parekh and beat Schenkel high short side 41 seconds later.
With Schenkel on the bench for an extra attacker Calem Mangone added to the Saginaw lead with an empty net goal at 15:26 of the third before Carson Harmer capped off the Spirit scoring with a power play marker at 18:03. At the edge of the crease, Harmer deflected a shot by Nic Sima from the left faceoff circle past Schenkel.
Schenkel made 38 saves for the Greyhounds in the setback.
“Charlie was great,” Dean said of the veteran netminder. “He gave us an opportunity. Even going into the third when it was 3-0, he gives us a chance to hopefully scrap back (into the game).”
Epperson paced the Spirit offensively with a goal and three assists.
In addition to the two-goal night for Misa, Mangone chipped in with a goal and an assist while Parekh assisted on a pair of goals for the Spirit.
Overage goaltender Andrew Oke stopped all 24 shots he faced for the shutout.
With the OHL’s trade deadline looming – Jan. 9 for overage players and Jan. 10 for all others – the Greyhounds return to action Wednesday on the road in Sudbury against the Wolves before returning home for a pair of games next weekend.
The Greyhounds will take a 16-21-0-0 record into Wednesday’s game following Saturday’s loss to the Spirit.
The team currently sits eighth in the Western Conference standings with a seven-point lead over Guelph and Owen Sound.
The locals are three points back of the Sarnia Sting for seventh and five points back of the sixth-seeded Flint Firebirds, who lost in overtime against Brampton on Saturday.
Saginaw improves to 19-17-1-0 with the win.
Spencer Evans, Christopher Brown, and Brady Martin remained out of the lineup due to injuries on Saturday for the Greyhounds. Dean said he didn’t expect any returns to the lineup on Wednesday night in Sudbury.