Bowman stellar in debut for Wolves

It was one practice and right into the fire for newly acquired goalie Zack Bowman, and he did not disappoint stopping 34 of 35 shots as the Sudbury Wolves beat the Windsor Spitfires 3-1 at home.

“I thought he looked real calm back there, made the saves we needed to make, he did a really good job killing the plays. I thought our guys played extremely well keeping a lot of the shots to the outside. At the end of the day you still have to make that save and kill that play and I think he did a real good job tonight,” said Wolves Head Coach David Matsos.

To cap it off he was named first star of the game.

“I was a little nervous going into the game obviously being my first game here, but then as the game went on, I started to get smooth, I started to find the groove in the net so then I just relaxed a little bit and just played hockey.”

“The crowd was really good with me when I came out on the ice for the first star, cheering, standing up. That got me pumped up and wanting to keep the streak going,” said Bowman.

The Spitfires did outshoot the Wolves by six shots over-all but the extra pucks didn’t bother the new goalie.

“(It was) a lot of shots, but I kind of expected that coming here, I knew there was going to be a lot of pucks, and that’s what every goalie wants. You don’t want to sit in net and take 10 shots a game, the more rubber the better I get. I love the shots, gets me into the game,” said Bowman.

This is a Spitfires team that coming into Friday’s game was 7-1-3-0 on the season sitting in first place in the West Division of the Western Conference.

The win is the Wolves third in their last four and second in a row as the pack move to 4-7-0-0 on the season.

“I’m happy for these guys, I’m happy for Zack’s first outing, really proud and happy the way the guys played tonight and the style that they played,” said Matsos.

“Every time we win they’re(the crowd) getting louder and louder, more into it that’s huge, the players love that. I think it was also huge for morale in the dressing room to win two in a row, because it hasn’t happened yet this year,” said defensemen Patrick Murphy.

The lineups featured more scratches than a moderately upset house cat as the Spitfires held out eight players including three of their top five scorers, most to injury including Dallas Stars draft pick Patrick Sanvido who is out with a knee injury.

On the other side the Wolves scratched four including injured goalie Troy Timpano.

Even though Windsor was short, and had just played a hard fought game in North Bay the night before, Spitfire Head Coach Rocky Thompson doesn’t believe being short is what cost them the game, though he did see some fatigue.

“I was really impressed with our teams energy and resiliency to come back, we could have easily been right into that game. Great goaltending from Sudbury, hard to get rebounds so we give them a lot of credit for that as well,” said Thompson.

The Wolves came out and had one of their better first periods of the season in the eyes of Matsos, playing both physical and creating chances, outshooting the Spitfires 13-10 and outscoring them 1-0.

The lone goal came from Pavel Jenys, his second on the year, with assists to David Levin and Alan Lyszczarczyk.

It was just the second time all season Sudbury both outscored and outshot their opponent in the first, the other a 3-2 loss in Sarnia.

“The first 20 was something that we fought with our first couple home games, I think our first 20 stemming from North Bay, Hamilton, even in Niagara it was still 0-0 after one, I think that’s kind of behind us now,” said Matsos.

The second period started out positive for the Wolves as well as just 40 seconds in, Patrick Murphy broke out and was hauled down forcing a penalty shot.

It’s not every day that a defensemen get’s a penalty shot chance.

“When I was going to shoot it the ref came up to me and said ‘ohh Murph when was the last time you had a penalty shot?’ I was like never before, and he said, ohh, well good luck.’ Kind of psyched me out a bit,” said Murphy.

Murphy took advantage going top cheese, glove side on goalie Michael DiPietro, no relation to former New York Islanders goalie Rick DiPietro.

After two the Wolves held onto the led 2-0.

Throughout the game both teams had their struggles on the power play, the two sides had combined for 0 for 9 before the Spitfires’s Gabriel Vilardi netted his sixth goal of the season, pulling Windsor within one.

And it stayed that way until late in the third, six minutes left to go, Dmitry Sokolov showed patience is a virtue as he walked through the zone past three Windsor players and then out-waited DiPietro for his third on the year, with Levin and Lyszczarczyk picking up their second assists of the game.

Matsos said Lyszczarczyk and Sokolov are starting to become more comfortable on the ice.

“It takes time, Dmitry is starting to buy in to the style that we want to play. I want him to have freedom from centre ice to their blue line down, but if you notice now he’s often one of our high guys, he’s tracking hard through the middle to the d-zone. he’s starting to play more of a complete game for a skill guy,” said Matsos.

It was the start the Wolves needed as they will head out onto the road tomorrow for a game in Barrie, before returning to face Hamilton on Sunday.