Wolves sweep three-game weekend

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Updated: February 10, 2012 9:03AM

On Thursday, before they started a stretch of three games in less than three days that began Friday in Peoria, the Wolves had a team meeting. Each player was given a directive by coach Craig MacTavish on what they needed to accomplish to make the pivotal weekend a success.

But with the physical demands, it was hard to imagine the Wolves could execute those tasks to such perfection.

They played superbly in all nine periods, had four lines working and swept the weekend, capped by a 5-2 victory over the Charlotte Checkers on Sunday at Allstate Arena. It was the first time the Wolves had won three games in three days since Dec. 27-29, 2010.

“Now we’re making some inroads and digging ourselves out of a hole that we had at the start of the year,” MacTavish said. “We’ve had decent stretches. Normally one good period, then we take our foot off the throttle. But we had a level of consistency this weekend that we hadn’t had.”

The Wolves set the tone early. Mark Mancari scored twice in the first period and assisted on the second of Tim Miller’s two goals. Darren Haydar added an empty-netter.

“They’ve had our number the last couple of games, and we wanted to come out and prove we could play with them,” Miller said. “Our fourth line played great. They provided a lot of ­energy. They were mucking it up in front of the net, and we were feeding off that.”

Charlotte had a chance to climb back into the game after Mancari committed a tripping penalty in the offensive zone at 9:36 in the third period. He atoned for it with his assist, which came 26 seconds after he left the box.

“I just made a bad play, and the boys saved me there,” he said. “That’s stuff that you can’t afford to do.”