The Greyhounds came out fast and hard at the start of the game against the visiting North Bay Battalion as the last time these two teams met the game went into a shoot out with Justin Bailey getting the shoot out winning goal.
The Greyhounds went down early on a power play goal by Nick Paul at 3:29. There were questions if the puck was kicked into the net by North Bay but after a review the goal stood.
With North Bay leading this seemed to crank up the urgency that the Greyhounds had to put this game back into their control.
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Zach Senyshyn would even the score at 4:44 and then 45 seconds later Michael Bunting would put the puck behind Jake Smith to give the Greyhounds the lead.
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Tolchinsky and Bunting would add two more goals in the first period to give the Greyhounds a 4-1 lead and Blake Speers would have a good scoring chance later in the period.
Jake Smith, who stopped 14 of the 18 shots on net by the Greyhounds was replaced in the second period by Sault native Jake Kment. The Greyhounds didn’t carry the momentum from the first period into the second as North Bay woke up and was starting to make a comeback.
Henriksson would get North Bay’s second power play goal at 11:06 to close the gap with the Greyhounds still leading 4-2 at the end of the second period.
The Greyhounds had only a couple of scoring opportunities by McCann and Senyshyn but the Battalion doubled the shots on net with the Greyhounds having 9 and North Bay had 18 in the period.
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The third period was almost a carbon copy of the first period with the Greyhounds dominating the period.
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Bunting would get his hat trick goal 47 seconds into the third period to put North Bay down by 3.
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Tyler Hore would get his second goal of the season and Jean Dupuy would add another to increase the Greyhound’s lead in the first half of the the third period.
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Sergey Tolchinsky was slow to get up after being put into the boards on a hard hit by Miller.
North Bay‘s Nick Paul would score late in the third on the power play with the final score of Soo Greyhounds – 7, North Bay Battalion – 3.
The Greyhounds out shot the Battalion 42 to 34 with Halverson stopping 31 shots.
Next action for the Greyhounds is Saturday against the Kitchener Rangers with the puck drop at 7:07.
