Home ice advantage came in handy as the Great North U18 AAA League staged year two of “Play-In Playoff Weekend”
Three teams converged on the Gerry McCrory Sports Complex and it was the Sudbury U18 AAA Wolves who would emerge from the troika on home ice, their 3-1 win on Sunday morning opposite the Thunder Bay Kings propelling them into the league round robin playoffs that begin on Wednesday in New Liskeard.
Coach Peter Michelutti Jr and company will join the North Bay U18 Trappers (70 pts), Soo U18 Jr Greyhounds (65), Sudbury U16 Wolves (49) and the host New Liskeard Cubs (35), with one and all fixated on the quest to reach the Central Ontario U18 AAA Playdowns in Markham from March 30th to April 5th.
After surrendering a 5-2 third period lead on Friday and settling for a 5-5 tie with the Timmins Majors, the Wolves downed Thunder Bay 7-2 in a must-win affair Saturday night, with the Kings bouncing the Majors 6-1 earlier in the day.
That would set up one final clash for the coveted spot up for grabs between the Kings and the Wolves.
“We realized that we needed to win last night and they (Thunder Bay) had obviously already advanced,” said Michelutti Jr. “But we thought if we could play the way that we did last night night, moving the puck, moving our feet and eliminating our turnovers, we would be tough to play against, tough to beat.”
Sudbury jumped out to a 2-0 first period lead on goals from Logan Moran and Denver Mulligan, with Michael Figliomeni cutting the deficit in half for the Kings early in the third. But a lovely individual effort from Gillis O’Daiskey (who added two assists) sealed the deal for the Wolves, the locals thrilled to get on the board first in a tighter checking affair.
“Mehka (Levesque) was over on the point on the left and I was back door,” said Logan Moran, recalling his game opening tally. “I thought he was going to shoot it at first. I was hoping he would feed me back door and he did. I tried to hit top right (right-hand corner) and I buried it.”
Like his coach, Moran knew better than to take anything for granted following a convincing win over Thunder Bay some 12 hours earlier. “Yesterday, we played a good game but I felt they were going to come back hard this game,” said the 16 year-old forward. “We had to dig deep and do what we had to do to get it done.”
In the Friday night affair, Harry Yeamans (Sudbury) and Cruz Batisse (Timmins) traded first period tallies before Gillis O'Daiskey and Khade Metatawabin squeezed a pair of goals around a counter-strike from Majors' forward Caleb Lavoie, on the power play, in the middle stanza.
The Wolves increased their lead to 5-2 on goals from O'Daiskey and Hudson Teddy but could not hold on as Timmins stormed back, with Lavoie drilling home his second of the game and Gerald Southwind adding a pair to knot the contest at 5-5.
With no overtime in place in play-in round robin games, the Sudbury lads were left to ponder the point that got away.
"You have to play good for three periods to get it done," said Moran. "Sometimes, you get a bad bounce and then find it hard to get back the momentum."
"Maintaining that grit and strength helps to stay in the game."
"Sometimes when you're up, you change the way you play, where if you kept the same mentality and kept playing the way that you were, you would probably score more often than not," said coach Michelutti, offering a cautiously optimistic prediction towards the GNML Championships this coming week.
"If we get to a semi-final, I think we would be a tough out," he said. "The way that we are playing right now, I wouldn't want to play us."
