Momentum Goes Saginaw's Way in 7-2 Win Over Plymouth

Photo by Mandy Getschman - Plymouth’s Mitch Jones scores in the second period on Friday in the Whalers’ 7-2 loss to Saginaw.

PLYMOUTH - Momentum often switches as quickly in hockey as weather does in Michigan – wait five minutes and there may be a change.

Momentum switched several times on Friday in an Ontario Hockey League game at Compuware Arena won by Saginaw, 7-2, over the Plymouth Whalers before a good crowd of 2,871.

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Dylan Sadowy led the Saginaw attack with his first OHL hat trick. Besides Sadowy’s three (21-22-23), Connor Brown scored twice (13-14) and Mitchell Stephens (14) and Tye Felhaber (5) also scored for Saginaw. Nick Moutrey added three assists and Jesse Barwell a pair for Saginaw, who improved to 17-17-1-1.

Mitch Jones scored both Plymouth goals (5-6) and now has four goals over his last three games. Plymouth is 12-22-2-1.

“Until we start playing with some desperation and some sense of urgency that every one of these games is important, ... this is what we’re going to get,” Plymouth head coach Don Elland told the Plymouth Observer and Eccentric. “We’re not talented enough to win with talent. We have to outwork teams and we’re not outworking anybody.”

See the rest of the story by Tim Smith.

Sadowy scored on Saginaw’s first shot at 4:21 of the first period, redirecting Moutrey’s pass from the right corner past Plymouth goaltender Zack Bowman.

The first momentum shift happened later in the first period.

Trailing 1-0, Plymouth’s Victor Crus Rydberg had a partial breakaway at 14:38, but Saginaw goaltender David Ovsjannikov stopped him. 25 seconds later, Tye Felhaber scored for Saginaw from the top of the right circle at 15:03. 11 seconds after that (at 15:14), Mitchell Stephens scored for Saginaw to give the Spirit a 3-0 lead

The momentum shifted again in the second period, mostly due to the efforts of Jones, who scored twice for the Whalers to cut the Saginaw lead to 3-2.

Jones’ first goal came at 5:39 of the period, when he skated out the right corner and fired a quick shot past Ovsjannikov.

Seconds later, Stephens rang a shot off the cross bar and the game stayed at 3-1.

Momentum shifted again later in the period when Jones hit Saginaw Greg Di Tomaso with high stick that wasn’t called by referees Chris Thornton and Ben Wilson. Play continued and Jones broke into the Saginaw zone with Will Bitten. Using Bitten as a decoy, Jones beat Ovsjannikov with a shot from the left circle at 16:38 to cut the Saginaw lead to 3-2.

But that’s a close as Plymouth would get.

After Brown (or perhaps Artem Atemov, if the scoring change goes through) gave Saginaw a 4-2 lead on a re-direct at 1:07 of the third period, Saginaw scored a pair of goals 40 seconds apart – Brown at 12:22 and Sadowy at 13:02 – to extend their lead to 6-2.

All that was left was for Sadowy to get the hat trick and he did at 18:29.

Plymouth is back in action next Friday at 7:05 pm at Compuware Arena, hosting North Bay.