That's what happened Sunday afternoon when the Wolves were beaten 6-0 by the North Bay Battalion at Memorial Gardens. The loss was the Wolves' 14th in a row, which surpasses the franchise record of 13 that was set earlier this season.
Interim head coach Dave Matsos said it was a frustrating afternoon. “We're a team that has to play with so much structure, and today we didn't,” said Matsos.
“They (Battalion) play a decent brand of defence. They don’t allow anything through the middle of the ice. We preached before the game that we needed to get pucks deep and go to work on their defence, but we didn’t do that. We were turning pucks over at the blueline and were losing the little battles along the boards, and it cost us.”
Creating scoring chances didn’t come easy for the Wolves. They managed just four shots in the first period, five in the second and six in the third for a total of just 15 against North Bay goalie Jake Smith, who picked up his fourth shut-out of the season.
The Battalion, meantime, fired 38 shots at Wolves goalie Troy Timpano, who saw his record drop to 5-26-1. The performance from the Wolves was hard to figure out after Friday night’s 46-shot performance in a 3-2 loss to the Saginaw Spirit.
Captain Brody Silk says they just didn’t compete hard enough. “Obviously we didn’t follow the game plan we had in front of us,” said Silk. “The outcome is what we deserved because we just didn’t compete at all. We knew what we had to do today, We wanted to get pucks to the net and get pucks behind their D, and I don’t think we did that.”
When asked for a response on the 14 game losing streak, this is what Silk had to say — “no comment.”
The Wolves don’t have long to dwell on the loss to the Battalion, as they are back in action on home ice Wednesday night when they host the Barrie Colts.
Friday night the Mississauga Steelheads are in town before the Wolves play the attack in Owen Sound Saturday night.
Games Notes:
-The Wolves have lost eight straight games to the Battalion dating back to last season.
-Wolves scratches Sunday were Trenton Bourque and Austin Clapham.
-Sudbury was 0-4 on the power-play while North Bay was 1-3.
