KEY INJURIES IN WIN OVER WINNIPEG

Tavares nets 15th and an assist in win

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Thunder Bay, Ont- Continuing to build on some solid wins, the Timberwolves took on their rival from across the Boundary Waters on Tuesday and downed the Winnipeg Ferrets 5-1 in front of a weekday capacity crowd at Canadian National Gardens.

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Things started off on a bad note for Thunder Bay though early in the first period. Carrying the puck into the offensive zone, Marc Savard was hammered just past the blueline by Carlo Colaiacovo and gingerly skated back to the Timberwolves bench. He would return.

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Antti Miettinen helped ease the pain when the Finnish forward put the Timberwolves up 1-0 for his 7th goal of the season from newly acquired winger Steve Sullivan [first THU point] and rookie centre John Tavares [pictured].

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Anton Volchenkov made up for an early ill-advised penalty to start the game and released a missle of a shot from the point for the Russian blueliners 5th of the season from Ales Hemsky and rookie defenseman Carl Gunnarsson.

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The injury bug bit again on the very next shift of Hemsky when he appeared to catch a rut in the ice and put no weight on his left knee back to the bench. He did not return and is expected to miss tomorrows game and possibly the next.

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Marc Savard who was obviously showing the effects of the earlier hit, managed to make the Ferrets forget about him long enough to sneak in behind the defense and accept a beautiful pass from Erik Johnson for his 13th goal.

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Winnipeg would not go down in the first period and scored a late tally from Eric Fehr at 19:55 to make it 3-1 Timberwolves going into the intermission.

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"We took a licking out there in the hits department, but at least we still potted a few goals in to sort of make up for it," said Timberwolves alternate captain, Patrick Sharp at the break. "We broke down there at the end with Fehr's goal. So that needs to be addressed and rectified. We have to maintain complete control for 60 full minutes."

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In the second period, control was the word to live by. Winnipeg did manage to double up their shots on Henrik Lundqvist [5-to-10]. But the Timberwolves keeper was sharp and stopped all of them and John Tavares added to the score with a smart intercepted Ferrets pass and broke away on Simeon Varlamov beating the Russian goalie for his 15th goal in this rookie campaign.

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In the third period, Lundqvist seen very little work [3 shots against] and Erik Johnson finished off the games scoring for the Bloomington, Minnesota-native's 7th from Keith Ballard and Marian Gaborik. The Timberwolves taking down the Ferrets with a 5-1 win.

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Despite the win, the Timberwolves learned that they will be without Hemsky and Savard for the next two games [tomorrow against Prague and Friday at Linz].

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As mentioned, the Timberwolves are right back at it tomorrow when they welcome in the Prague Piranhas [19-31-9] to CN Gardens.

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>>>3-STARS

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>>>*John Tavares [THU] - 1 goal and an assist

>>**Erik Johnson [THU] - 1 goal and an assist

>***Anton Volchenkov [THU] - Power play goal