Down 2-1 going into the third period, the Wolves scored three goals to earn the win and snap a four-game losing streak.
Jeff Corbett, Danny Desrochers, Nicholas Baptiste and Radek Faksa scored for Sudbury. Aaron Ekblad and Cordell James scored for Barrie. Sudbury goalie Franky Palazzese made 33 saves, while his Barrie counterpart, Mackenzie Blackwood, stopped 32 shots.
“We competed hard today and it was big for us to battle back against Barrie the way we did,” Baptiste said. “We didn’t have the start we wanted. When you have leaders like we do, we overcame it and battled back in the third period to win the game.”
Sudbury head coach Paul Fixter liked his team’s ability to put away a sloppy start and take the win.
“There was a lot of adversity we had to battle through,” Fixter said. “For the mental aspect of our team, we needed to get winning again because they haven’t been coming. We’ve gone on a bit of a slide here, so it’s important.”
Fixter wants the team to be focussed on one thing: Winning games.
“I shortened the bench a bit. It showed the guys at this point of the year it’s about wins. It’s finding a way to win. I will give the team credit. In the third period, they found a way to win. We persevered.”
The Wolves are going to use the victory as a potential springboard to more wins.
“We came through today, but it wasn’t easy,” Desrochers said. “We have to build off a game like this and take our game to another level. We believe in each other and that is the biggest thing for us. We need to keep believing in each other for more success.”
Any lingering animosity from the game today, and there was a lot of it in the game that manifested with a lot of rough play and after-the-whistle scrums through all three periods, will only have three days to die down as the two clubs hook up in Barrie on Thursday night this week.
The Wolves return home Friday when they host the London Knights. Game time is 7:30 p.m. The Wolves will retire the number of former Wolves great and current London head coach, Dale Hunter in a pre-game ceremony.
Game notes
The game’s three stars were: Jeff Corbett (first), Danny Desrochers (second) and Andreas Athanasiou (third).The Wolves scratched Kyle Capobianco, David Zeppieri and Brody Silk.
The Colts scratched Liam Maaskant, Josh Carrick and Nick Pastorious.
Barrie was 1-for-7 on the power play. The Wolves were 0-for-4 on the power play.
