Dismal day for the Wolves, who drop 10th straight game

Sudbury Wolves Head Coach David Matsos says his team’s effort in Sunday’s game against the Kingston Frontenacs may have been the worst of the season.

The loss may not have been the largest – 5-2 -- but from the start of the game, the pack were outplayed by the best team in the Eastern Conference.

“It’s the first time in a while, I felt the effort level was not there. For me that’s unacceptable,” Matsos said. “Everybody starts on the same level. We have different skill sets -- we have first overall picks in Dmitry and these guys that are high-end skill sets – and for me, the work ethic, everybody is the same, everybody starts the same.

“Today I was taken off guard. We had a good practice yesterday and I just didn’t see that coming.”

He said there were some veteran players “who didn’t want to engage,” and it resulted in a bad performance for a lot of players. And after the game, some Wolves veterans said they felt the same way about their effort.

“Right from the get-go I think we all came out soft, we just weren’t ready to play today, so yeah, real disappointing,” said Wolves centre Jacob Harris.

“It’s pretty much a group failure I guess today. It seemed no one really had any jump, our young guys came out, they played well, but the onus is on us older guys we have to lead the younger guys.”

The loss puts the losing streak at 10 games, the longest of the season. The team's record is now 5-17-2-0.

“It’s been a long losing streak, and of course it’s frustrating but I mean. for that to turn around we got to work and today we didn’t bring that work ethic,” said Harris.

Sudbury’s ability to start games in the past few weeks had been a positive for the team, but that was not the case on this day. On the first goal, Zack Bowman, making his 13th appearance for Sudbury, went out to play the puck behind the net.

He had two Frontenacs crashing down on him from both sides. He fanned on a shot and turned the puck over to Jared Steege, who centred it to Warren Foegele who found the empty net.

The pair of Steege and Foegele were back at it again a minute and a half later. The pair came down on a two-on-one and Foegele slid a pass across to Jared Steege, who fired his sixth of the season.

Kingston outshot Sudbury 16-5 in the period, but were still in the game down 2-0. The Wolves started the second period like they did the first -- on a penalty kill.

Macauley Carson broke out shorthanded but the Kingston defence recovered and denied any shot opportunity. The puck came back the other way and Jacob Paquette scored the power play marker.

Four minutes later, a scramble in front of the Wolves net led to the fourth goal of the game for Kingston, banged in by Jason Robertson.

The Wolves answered back with a beautiful individual effort by Patrick Murphy on a Wolves power play. Murphy took the pass from Kyle Capobianco and sped through the middle of the ice.

He undressed a couple Kingston players before beating goalie Jeremy Helvig with the backhand top shelf, number six on the year.

Kingston answered right back making the game 5-1.

Then it was rookie David Levin’s turn to make some moves on the Kingston defence. Levin carried the puck down the right side, made an inside out move to get around the defence and slid the puck through the crease behind Helvig right onto Alan Lyszczarczyk’s stick for his sixth of the season.

Capobianco finished the game with two assists, while Murphy fired five shots on net to go along with his goal.

Sudbury will not have to travel this upcoming weekend as they continue a four game homestead with Hamilton coming to town on Friday and Flint on Saturday.

“It won’t be a fun week of practice, I can tell you right now,” said Matsos. “I believe in time off and rest and stuff but not at this point. It’s going to be a hard week.

“It’s disappointing because the way that things are going for us, the only way to get out of it, is to ... work.”