Penalties prove costly
by Peter Ruicci (Independent Media) | Photo courtesy of Tony Saxon (GuelphToday.com)
Early penalty trouble, and the power-play goals which followed, proved too much for the Soo Greyhounds to overcome on Friday.
Max Namestnikov scored four times – including three with the man advantage – to power the Guelph Storm to a 7-3 victory over the Hounds before 4,600 at Sleeman Centre.
The Storm scored two power-play goals in the opening frame and opened a 3-0 lead with another man-advantage tally before the second period was eight-minutes old.
“Unfortunately, mistakes keep on biting us in the ass. We’re beating ourselves with undisciplined penalties and turnovers,” said head coach John Dean, whose team fell to 17-25-9-5, while falling four points back of eighth-place Kitchener in the Western Conference playoff race. “We keep shooting ourselves in the foot. That’s the bottom line.”
The Rangers came from behind twice on Friday to eventually force overtime, before falling 3-2 to visiting Owen Sound. With a 24-26-4-0 mark, good for 52 points, Kitchener has 14 regular season games remaining.
With 48 points, the Soo has 12 games left, including Sunday’s 2 p.m. showdown with the Rangers at The Aud in Kitchener.
“That was a tough pill to swallow, going down early like that,” winger Brenden Sirizzotti said of Friday’s contest.
“Obviously, that’s not the way you want to start. We have to stay out of the penalty box,” added centre Mark Duarte, whose club was nicked for four power-play goals overall. “We outplayed them 5-on-5, but they capitalized when they were on the power play.”
The Hounds troubles began when Connor Clattenburg was assessed a five-minute match penalty for slew-footing at 9:36 of the opening frame. While working on the penalty-kill, Justin Cloutier took a high-sticking minor at 10:59.
Skating with a 5-on-3 advantage, Namestnikov banged home a rebound at the right side of the goal, beating Charlie Schenkel at 11:29.
Five minutes later, with Bryce McConnell-Barker serving two minutes for a face-off violation, Namestnikov struck again on the power play.
The Guelph sniper was all alone at the right side of the goal when the puck came to him off of a scramble in front. Schenkel had no chance on the play and the home side led 2-0.
In the middle frame, with Matthew Virgilio off for elbowing, Braeden Bowman ripped one from the left circle. He beat Schenkel high on the short side, making it 3-0 at 7:28.
Dean agreed the Hounds “couldn’t seem to dig ourselves out of that hole.”
The coach spoke of how impressed he was with the way in which his team began the game, and the significance of the match penalty.
Did he agree with the referee’s call?
“There’s so much grey area” in the rules, Dean began. “But the league wants to protect their players, so they’ll always err on the side of caution.”
Less than four minutes after Guelph’s third goal, the Hounds struck with the man advantage as Kalvyn Watson notched his 27th of the season.
Watson slid home the rebound of a Kirill Kudryavtsev shot past Patrick Leaver to make it 3-1 at 11:12.
However, just 18 seconds after Watson’s goal, following a Soo miscue, Charlie Paquette was alone at the left side of the net. He deposited a feed from Valentin Zhugin to make it 4-1.
“That was just a momentum killer,” said Sirizzotti. “We score that goal, we’re down by two and then for them to score one immediately, it was a real momentum killer for us.”
“It was a backbreaker,” Dean said of the goal. “We make two turnovers on one shift and then they go in and make it 4-1. From there, you could see some deflation on our bench.”
After his four-goal performance, Namestnikov has 27 on the season, including 23 in 35 games for the Storm.
“It was just one of those nights when the puck was going in for me,” he told RogersTV following the game.
Bowman finished with a goal and four assists, while Michael Buchinger also notched four assists as the Storm improved to 27-24-4-1.
Jake Karabela had the other goal for the winners, while Matthew Poitras and Cooper Walker notched two assists each.
Duarte, on the power play, and Sirizzotti had the Soo’s other goals. Sirizzotti finished with a goal and an assist and he and Duarte now have 18 goals each on the season. Kudryavtsev contributed two assists and the Soo held a 35-33 edge in shots.
On a night when he didn’t receive a lot of support, Schenkel was pulled in favour of Samuel Ivanov at 12:59 of the second period. That was following Namestnikov’s third goal, which gave Guelph a 5-1 lead.
Though the Hounds surrendered four power-play goals on eight chances, Dean said the PK structure was there.
However, “it came down to battles in front of our net. They got two free goals in front of our net just based on compete.”
Afterward, attention immediately shifted to Sunday’s clash with the Rangers.
“These games are do or die for us. We’re making a push for the playoffs,” Sirizzotti said. “This is a huge game for us.”
“Obviously, we have to bring our A game,” Duarte added. “I was really proud of the group tonight. But we have to stay out of the box on Sunday, stay confident and stick to what we’re doing.”
Dean talked of how there are things his players can take from the Guelph game and move forward with.
“There was fight in our group,” he said. “I liked some of our compete. But we’re not giving ourselves a chance to win and we have to do that.”
Notes:
Slew-footing match penalties typically carry a suspension. The OHL is to review video from the incident involving Clattenburg.
