Greyhounds take stranglehold in series with Storm

The Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds continued their domination of the Guelph Storm on Sunday night in Game 3 of their Western Conference semi final by taking a 6-1 victory in front of a crowd of 4,052 at the Sleeman Centre to take a 3-0 strangle hold in the best of seven set.

Jared McCann opened the scoring just 2:01 into the game with a long shot that just got a piece of Justin Nichols glove but not enough as it went over top of the small goaltender for a 1-0 Greyhounds lead. The Hounds then began a power play onslaught when Blake Speers found the back of the net from in the slot just 10 seconds into the Soo’s first man advantage of the evening at 11:57 to make it 2-0.

The Guelph Storm would find themselves with several minutes of power play time in the first period but could not beat Hounds starter Brandon Halverson in a period where the Soo outshot the Storm by a margin of 16-11.

The Hounds power play continued to excel early in the second period when at 1:20 Darnell Nurse redirected the puck in the crease past Nichols to extend the Sault Ste. Marie lead to 3-0. Just 30 seconds later the score would extend to 4-0 when a Nick Ritchie wrister from the top of the circle to the right of Nichols would go top shelf.

Sault Ste. Marie would make it a perfect three for three on the power play at 7:09 when Justin Bailey would give the Hounds a 5-0 advantage.

Guelph would finally find the score sheet during their own man advantage at 13:27. With the Storm up two men Tyler Bertuzzi would beat Halverson high on the glove side to cut the score to 5-1.

Keigan Goetz would restore the five goal lead by the Hounds as he finished off a great rush by Zachary Senyshyn who drove down the right wing boards and threw the puck towards the front of the net and Goetz managed to get his stick on it to redirect it over the right shoulder of Nichols who appeared to be favouring an injury.

The two teams played a very quick third period with only twelve shots total between the two teams as the Hounds finished off a 6-1 victory to take a 3-0 series lead. Bradley Van Schubert played the entire third period for the Storm after Justin Nichols surrendered 6 goals on 31 shots through 40 minutes. Van Schubert would stop all 9 shots he faced in the third period. Nichols did not even return to the bench for the final frame. Brandon Halverson stopped 26 of 27 shots in the victory.

One Storm player who also didn’t see the ice at all in the third period was Robby Fabbri who was benched early in the second period and remained on the bench for the outset of the game.

With the victory the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds can punch their ticket to the Western Conference Finals with a victory when the teams meet again in Game 4 at the Sleeman Centre on Tuesday night with a 7:00PM puck drop.

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