The result wasn’t flattering.
After responding well to some early-game struggles in an exhibition win over the Sudbury Wolves last weekend at home, the Soo Greyhounds fell behind early and dropped a 9-3 Ontario Hockey League exhibition decision to the Saginaw Spirit Friday night in Midland, Mich.
The loss is one that the team plans to use as a learning experience for what was a young lineup in the game.
“We need to go through this,” said Greyhounds coach John Dean. “As much as I hate it and I do not like losing 9-3, we need to have these days and it’s better to have them now and get that lesson out of the way and move on from it.”
Dean called the loss “a pretty sloppy game on our side of it.”
“We were pretty unorganized,” Dean said. “To be fair to our guys, we’ve had two or three days of practice. We’ve worked on a few areas of our game, and we were really hoping to see some of those areas come through in the game. At points we did and at points we didn’t. Dressing a younger team, you’re going to see the inconsistencies in that.”
Brodie McConnell-Barker, Harrison Ballard, and Alex Kostov scored for the Greyhounds in the loss.
In total, nine players had multi-point nights for the Spirit in the victory including a two-goal night from Dean Loukus.
David Brown paced the Spirit with four points on the strength of a goal and three assists while Matyas Sapovaliv also assisted on three goals for Saginaw.
Luke McNamara and Zayne Parekh chipped in with a goal and an assist each.
Mitchell Smith, Davis Codd, Roberto Mancini, and Michael Misa assisted on a pair of goals each.
Bode Stewart, P.J. Forgione, Josh Glavin, and Sault product Lincoln Moore rounded out the Saginaw scoring.
Sophomore Samuel Ivanov got the start in goal for the Greyhounds, stopping 13 of the 19 shots he faced in just under 30 minutes of work.
“For us, given the nature of the group we dressed and a lot of inexperience in the lineup, even though we probably hung him out to dry pretty well, if we could get a save here or there just to relax the group, it would be a benefit for us,” Dean said. “At the same time, a majority of the goals that went in, you really can’t fault Sammy on. It’s kind of a double-edged sword where we want him to make a big save, but at the same time we were not good in front of him.”
Rookie Landon Miller stopped 10 of 13 shots the rest of the way for the visitors.
Andrew Oke went the distance in goal for the Spirit, stopping 17 shots.
The two clubs will make the drive north to conclude the weekend series on Saturday night in the Sault. Puck drop at the GFL Memorial Gardens is set for 7:07 p.m.
On the injury front, three veterans remained out of the lineup on Friday for the Greyhounds.
Dean confirmed Friday night that Caeden Carlisle, who was injured during training camp, is available to play and could see his first exhibition action in Saturday’s game.
Defenceman Luc Brzustowski remains out day-to-day and forward Owen Allard won’t return to the lineup this weekend.