The Soo Greyhounds played a game they should have won but didn’t because they were outcoached in my humble opinion.

The Hounds dominated the game in the first two periods outshooting the Spits 25-10. The Spitfires netminder Xavier Medina was stellar in keeping out all but 2 of the shots.

Staying on the topic of goaltenders; the Hounds let down Tucker Tynan once again as he was a star in respect to he came up huge a couple of times during the lull in the action.

Goalies will tell you when you don’t get a lot of action, you can mentally lose your composure and focus and Tucker didn’t.

In the 3rd period Tyan made save after save as the Hounds ran around in their own end trying to not add to their lead, but running out the clock as it looked like.

We all know this backfired.

In my opinion, Marc Savard went into the room and tore a piece off the boys and told them they were being embarrassed and needed to push.

I know John Dean is a more politically correct coach and I don’t know what he (if he said anything) said to the kids, but I assume he said keep playing the same game as they were dominating.

In my opinion, knowing that Windsor would come out hard like it was the last game they might play; Dean should have changed his game plan.

The critical point as a couch potato viewer who is just giving his opinion is that I think that Coach Dean should have used his timeout which is free $$ to settle the kids down when it was still 2-0 but were being definitely outplayed.

This would have given him a time to get the kids to refocus but also it could disrupt the energy flow from the Windsor attack.

He failed to call that timeout and I couldn’t believe he didn’t call it when it was 2-1.

After that all I saw was the kids just playing to play out the clock and during the last minute, I had a bad feeling and yup; BOOM….A solid effort in the first 40 went down the drain.

Poor Tucker….the other kids lose as a group, but as a goalie…your record is individual and what scouts and teams look at. This loss should never have happened.

The Hounds played good in the overtime but the three attempts in the shootout left much to be desired. The way they skated to the net; I thought my feed (CHL Streaming) was off as it looked like they were skating in slow motion.

The faster you skate in towards the net the more advantage the shooter has over the goaltender; every netminder will tell you that.

Anyway, the Hounds will need to get the win tonight to keep their distance from Windsor who are now only 3 points behind with 3 games in hand.

The Hounds have now lost to the Spits 4 out of 5 games played this season.

On a bright note; Tyler Savard played a great game in front of his Dad with a goal, an assist, and a second star note.

One of my favorite defenceman Caeden Carlisle scored the other Hound goal with Connor Toms making an NHL superior style play to get the puck to the net for the deflection.

Tonights Tale of the Tape

GUELPH STORM

Coach George Burnett

GM George Burnett

Record 18-8-2-1

Guelph Storm players to watch will be Sasha Pastujov with 39 points and Danny Zhilkin with 24.

In net either rookie Jacob Oster or Owen Bennett will get the start and both have similar GAA’s as do the Hounds netminders that are in the mid 3+ area.

SOO GREYHOUNDS

Coach John Dean

GM Kyle Raftis

Record 20-12-2-1

For the Hounds; players to watch will be Kerins, Kartye, Dickinson, and MacKay.

Thompson and O’Rourke will also need  to be leaders and stay out of the box and play defense first and offense second. This team is a contender but needs to address their mental game and defensive game.

In net, it could go either way with Sammy or Tucker.

But if you traded for Tucker, I would keep playing him as per his play and not because of the win/loss column. I believe that since arriving here in the Soo; there were about 4 games that fell as losses under Tucker and the team in front of him let down his good play.

 

Go Hounds Go !