Sting fall in overtime
By DAVE BORODY
The Sarnia Sting let the Peterborough Petes hang around and hang around until it was too late.
The Petes scored with just over two minutes remaining in regulation time and then scored in the first minute of overtime to edge the Sting 2-1, Saturday night in front of 2,697 fans at the RBC Centre.
Nick Ritchie banged home a rebound at the 46-second mark of extra time for the game winner.
Sting head coach Trevor Letowski was disappointed with his team’s performance.
“I didn’t like our game tonight. I thought we had turned the corner over the past five games. But we weren’t good tonight. We let them hang around. We had chances to put the game out of reach, but their goalie made some good saves.”
He added, “A lot of bad things seem to happen to us late in games. That starts to play on player’s minds and you could see that tonight. Obviously it’s frustrating. On the winning goal we made mistakes. We cheated and tried to go on offence too quickly.”
The Sting had five power play opportunities, but came up empty.
“We generated some chances, but just couldn’t score. I told the players after the second admission it was one of those nights where we had not played well and we need to be better in the third period. Unfortunately it was much of the same in period three and we fell short.”
As in the game the night before against Erie, the Sting opened the scoring at 12:03 of period one when Nick Latta knocked in a goalmouth pass from Nikolay Goldobin for his 35th of the year. Anthony DeAngelo also assisted.
That was it for scoring until the 17:57 mark of period three when the Petes tied the game when Eric Cornell knocked in a rebound from close range.
Up until that point, Sting goalie Taylor Dupuis had been perfect making several outstanding saves, including stopping a breakaway in the second period. The Petes scored on their 38th short.
Peterborough goalie Jason Da Silva was just as efficient as he faced 31 shots. He thwarted Goldobin twice from close range.
Peterborough was zero-for-three with the man advantage.
Sarnia now has six games remaining in their Ontario Hockey League season.
They travel to Saginaw on Tuesday to face the Spirit in a rare 10:45 a.m. start. They return home on the weekend for a pair of games at the RBC Centre.
The Sting takes on Sault Ste. Marie Friday night at 7:05 p.m. and hosts the Guelph Storm Sunday at 4:05 p.m.
Tickets for the weekend games are on sale daily at the RBC Box Office, by calling 519-541-1717 or going online at Sarniasting.com
Dupuis was the game’s first star with Da Silva second star and Ritchie third star. Kevin Spinozzi was Sarnia’s hardest-working player of the game
Latta and Goldobin now share the team lead with 35 goals apiece while Goldobin tops the team with 50 assists.
Dave Borody is a freelance writer who covers Sting games both home and away and also does features for the Sting Website.
