Hounds Down Sting

By DAVE BORODY
The Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds shutout the Sarnia Sting 2-0 in Ontario Hockey League play, Saturday night before 3,184 fans at the RBC Centre.
The loss was Sarnia’s fifth in a row, their longest longest streak this year. They were shutout for the third time this season, the first time on home ice.
It’s frustrating, no doubt about that,” said Sting captain Jordan Hill. The mood in the room right now is not like it was when we won six games in a row. We just have to find a way to get out of this streak. It’s all about working hard.”
Hill felt the Sting didn’t play that badly against the Greyhounds.
It was one of our better games of late. We worked hard, but obviously that wasn’t good enough. We need to come back and have a good week of practice and be ready for our next game.”
The game was close from start to finish.
Despite outshooting Sault Ste. Marie 10-5 in period one, Sarnia found themselves trailing 1-0 after 20 minutes.
Brett Thompson provided the Greyhounds with a 1-0 lead at 15:14 on the power play when he knocked in a rebound off a point drive. It was Thompson’s team-high 14th goal of the year.
Sarnia’s best chance of the period came when Brandon Francisco ripped a shot off the crossbar.
The Sting had two golden opportunities in the second period. Jesse Stoughton was alone in the slot. His shot was partially stopped by Greyhounds goalie Robin Lehner and then the puck went off the goalpost.
Late in the period Kale Kerbashian of the Sting split the Greyhounds defence and was in alone. But Lehner stopped his initial shot and the Greyhounds netminder also stopped the rebound by Kerbashian.
Early in the third period Brett Ritchie had a great chance for Sarnia, but fanned on his shot in the slot.
The Greyhounds had a three-on-one break going the other way and made it count when Daniel Catenacci, the first overall pick in last year’s draft, finished off a goalmouth pass from Thompson 5:56.
You aren’t going to win many games when you don’t score,” said Sting head coach Dave MacQueen. Defensively we were very good and didn’t give them much.
Right now we are caught between a rock and a hard place. We were being aggressive with our defencemen pinching. As a result we were giving up six or seven goals a game. So we decided to back off a little on our forecheck. We’ve been better defensively, but not generating any offence. We need to find that happy medium.”
Sarnia was zero-for-six with the man advantage.
When our power play was operating around 30 per cent, we were winning games. Right now our power play is non-existant,” said MacQueen. We have our first unit and then we’ve tried just about everybody on the second unit. But nothing is happening.”
MacQueen added, we worked hard and competed. We had some chances, but they capitalized on their chances and we didn’t. Take their second goal. We had a four-on-two break and Ritchie gets the puck in the slot and fans on the shot. They come back three-on-one and the puck is in the back of the net. That’s the way things have been going of late.”
MacQueen says his young players can’t carry the load.
I thought Brandon Francisco had his best two games of the season this weekend. J.C. Campagna worked hard tonight. But these guys can’t carry the team. We need the older guys who are playing 20-22 minutes a game to create some offence. You can’t expect 16-year-olds to do that.”
MacQueen knows his young team is going to have their peaks and valleys.
Right now it’s a young team who are a little down on themselves. You can see some of the guys are a little discouraged and gripping their sticks a little too hard. But there are some upsides. We’ve cut down on our turnovers and that was a big problem early in the year.”
He added, we are doing a lot of individual stuff with the players. But we can’t beat them up. We do have to make them aware we aren’t satisfied.”
Sarnia finished with a 25-20 edge in shots on goal.
The Sting resume action Thursday when they host the Peterborough Petes at the RBC Centre at 7:35 p.m. for their only home game of the week. Friday the Sting play at London and Saturday night is in Sault Ste. Marie.
STING NOTES
– Thompson was first star while Lehner; a draft pick of the Ottawa Senators was second star with his second shutout of the year, while Hill was third star.
– Shayne Campbell was in goal for Sarnia and Jesse Raymond the backup. Overager Adam Courchaine is expected to be out two weeks with an upper body injury. He was hurt in Friday’s game with Windsor.
– Forward Jesse Stoughton was back in the lineup after missing one game. Anton Zupancic played his second straight game on the Sting blueline.
– Sarnia’s home record is now 5-6-1-0 while they are 10-14-1-0 overall. The Greyhounds are now 6-7-1-0 on the road.


Dave Borody is a freelance writer who covers games both home and away for the Sting website.