Miners streak ends, lose a heart-breaker to Ottawa in OT.

Miners streak ends, lose a heart-breaker to Ottawa in OT. 

CANADIAN PRESS (Sudbury, ON)

As the saying goes, “all good things come to an end”, and for the Sudbury Miners, that was the case on Thursday night.

Tyler Toffoli scored at 3:45 into overtime to give the visiting Ottawa Barracudas a 3-2 victory last night.  With the loss, the Miners unbeaten streak stops at a season-high six games.

“We played 55 good minutes today, which is a good sign, and we competed," Miners coach Derek Sutton said. "We competed like heck. We deserved to win and you know, for me we're trying to build something, but you build it through the really tough times like we had at the start of the year."

Matt Moulson and Bobby Ryan also scored for Ottawa (21-27-3), which has won five of its last six overall. Michael Hutchinson, in only his fifth start of the season, made 24 saves for his third victory of the year.

Joonas Donskoi and Radim Vrbata had the goals for the Miners (14-34-3), both unassisted, who now drop to 1-1-1 in the first three games of their current seven-game home stand.

Sudbury had trailed 2-0 early in the third period before Donskoi fired a shot past Hutchinson at 10:52 of the third.  Donskoi has now scored in two consecutive games for the Miners.  Vrbata’s marker at 14:08 of the period would send the game into overtime.

Ottawa outshot Sudbury 4-2 in the extra frame.

“We had our chances. We've just got to bear down at the end of the day," Donskoi said. "But I think we liked how we played."

“We had a shaky start, when you look at — third game in four nights," said Sutton.  "We had some heavy legs. I think that we had to kind of get going, and I thought from the second period on we were a much better team but just didn’t get the result we wanted."

MINERS NUGGETS

- With the loss, the Miners are still winless in six overtime contests this year (0-3-3).

- After the game, the Miners announced that they had traded winger Tom Wilson, to the Dartmouth Lakers in exchange for their 2018 4th round pick.   As luck would have it, Dartmouth is in Sudbury on Friday night to take on the Miners.  Wilson is expected to be in the line-up.

- Coach Derek Sutton stated that Jake Allen will get the start on Friday versus the Lakers.