Wolves start strong, but lose 5-2 to Battalion

The Wolves were able to put a 10-2 loss Friday night to London behind them but still had trouble generating offence in North Bay Sunday afternoon.

The Wolves hung around for two periods, but dropped a 5-2 decision to the Battalion.

Wolves interim head coach Dave Matsos was surprised his team was in the game as long as they were.

"I didn't really love the way that we handled ourselves in the neutral zone in the first and second period," said Matsos.

"For us to have sucess these guys have to play a real clean game in the neutral zone and our board play has to be better."

"For the most part I thought our team worked hard, but we just played too fancy for my liking."

The Wolves had a decent start to the game, but the Battalion opened up the scoring at the 4:02 mark.

The Wolves got a break midway through the period while killing a penalty when a Batallion defenceman collided with one of the referees. That allowed Jeff Corbett to go in on a breakaway and score shorthanded. However, North Bay would score late in the period to take a 2-1 lead into the dressing room.

Pavel Jenys scored his 11th of the season at 5:55 to tie the game at 2, but the Batallion would re-take the lead less than four minutes later making it 3-2 Battalion after 2.

Trailing 4-2 in the third, Jenys was hauled down on a breakaway and was awarded a penalty shot, but failed to convert.

The Batallion finished the scoring while on a five-minute power play when Wolves rookie Brady Patacki was kicked out of the game after a match penalty for slew footing. It was his second such penalty this season.

Jenys says he liked how they played but said they failed to play a full 60 minutes.

"We played a good two periods, but took too many penalities," said Jenys.

The Wolves played without number one goalie Troy Timpano, who was out with an upper body injury suffered in the first period of Friday's loss to London.

Also out with upper body injuries were Chad Heffernan and Trenton Bourque. Bourque is out for the season with a broken collar bone.

Sam Tanguay got the start in goal and stopped 40 of the 45 shots he faced.

Jesse Moran was called up from the Sudbury Nickel Barons to serve as the Wolves backup goalie.

The Wolves will spend Family Day Monday in Oshawa to face the CHL's top ranked Generals. Game time is 2 o'clock.