Hounds out to halt home hex
Unbeaten in six road tilts this season, Soo Greyhounds will try to transfer that success to home ice with three games at the Essar Centre this week.
The home stand begins tonight with the Sudbury Wolves in town. The Greyhounds then play host to the Flint Firebirds on Friday and the Ottawa 67’s on Saturday.
While the Hounds have a perfect — and improbable — 6-0 record on the road thus far this Ontario Hockey League season, they are a puzzling 1-3 on home ice.
Here’s a quick look at the Hounds three opponents for this week.
SUDBURY — The Wolves come to town with a 6-3-1 record as the only team above the .500 mark in the Central Division.
A lot of eyes will be on Wolves rookie forwards Darian Pilon and Drake Pilon as they return to their home town tonight.
The twin torches have been impressive as OHL rookies and earned the praise of Wolves general manager Barclay Branch and head coach David Matsos for their energetic, relentless, hard-toiling way of playing the game.
Darian is fourth on the Wolves scoring chart with 4 goals, 3 assists, 7 points. Drake has 4 points of his own from a goal and 3 assists.
Among the many Wolves of note are slick, smooth-skating, point-per-game defenseman Kyle Capobianco.
FLINT — Along with the Greyhounds, Sarnia Sting and Windsor Spitfires, the Firebirds are one of four teams in the five-member West Division that are above the .500 mark.
Flint — which missed the playoffs in the 10-team Western Conference in 2015-2016 — has a respectable record of 5-4-1 to begin the 2016-2017 season.
Meanwhile, there is an unlikely leader atop the OHL scoring chart in the person of Flint forward Ryan Moore.
While Moore is coming off a productive 2015-2016 season in which he finished second on the Firebirds with 48 points from 25 goals and 23 assists, his ascension as the OHL’s points leader thus far in ’16-17 is a bit startling.
In 10 games, Moore has 10 goals, 11 assists, 21 points. And not only does the 5-foot-8, 170-pound, 1997 birth-year skater have at least one point in every game thus far this season but he has goals in eight of Flint’s 10 contests.
Besides Moore, other major contributors have been the trio of forwards Kole Sherwood and Luke Kirwan and defenseman Jalen Smereck, who all had extended stays at National Hockey League camps.
All three have played in only seven of the Firebirds 10 games to date yet they have combined for a whopping 25 points.
Sherwood (recently acquired from the London Knights) has 5 goals, 5 assists, 10 points.
Kirwan has 6 goals, 2 assists, 8 points.
Smereck (obtained from the Oshawa Generals over the summer) has 0 goals, 7 assists, 7 points.
Then there is another top forward in Nicholas Caamano, who is second behind Moore on the Firebirds scoring chart. Caamano has 6 goals, 11 assists, 17 points in 10 games.
And goalie Garrett Forrest, a first-team Northern Ontario Jr. Hockey League all-star with the Powassan Voodoos last season, has played well as a 19-year old OHL rookie for the Firebirds while sharing net time with veteran Connor Hicks.
Forrest has a 2-2 record, 2.40 goals against average and .924 save percentage.
OTTAWA — The 67’s, like the Greyhounds, are having difficulty winning on home ice with an 0-4 record to start the season.
Away from home, the 67’s have done well with a 3-2-1 record in 6 outings.
Ottawa players to watch include high-scoring forwards Artur Tyanulin (3-13-16), Austen Keating (4-9-13) and Drake Rymsha (6-1-7.)
With the youngest defense corps in the OHL, the 67’s feature three defenders who will be in the Soo next week playing for Team Canada as part of the World U-17 Hockey Challenge. They are 2000 birth-year blueliners Kevin Bahl, Carter Robertson and Peter Stratis.
Ottawa has another dandy in 1999 birth-year defenseman Noel Hoefenmayer, who has 8 points in 10 games this season.