Spits make it two wins in row
Offence shines against Sarnia after Thursday’s stingy defensive battle
The Sarnia Sting proved to SARNIA be the perfect tonic for the ailing Windsor Spitfires.
After losing five games in a row, the Spitfires have won two straight over the now-reeling Sting. The Spitfires completed a sweep of the home-and-home series Friday with a 7-4 victory before a crowd of 3,214 at Progressive Auto Sales Arena.
The teams are now separated by only one point in the OHL’s Western Conference. The Sting (23-275-2) are in seventh place and the Spitfires (23-28-3-3) are in eighth. Curtis Douglas and Chris Playfair each scored twice for the Spitfires, who led 5-1 midway through the second period.
The rematch was quite a bit different from the Spitfires’ 3-1 win Thursday in Windsor. The teams combined for only 39 shots in the low-scoring affair.
The Sting nearly eclipsed that total by themselves Friday with 37 shots on Spitfires goalie Colton Incze.
“Last night, it was a real stingy game,” said Spitfires head coach Trevor Le tow ski said .“There wasn’ t much on both sides. I thought both teams defended real well, but tonight it opened up, that’s for sure. “I thought that they came out real strong. That first goal we scored kind of settled us down and, from there, I thought we played real well. It was a good offensive effort. Played pretty simple, we didn’t turn a lot of pucks over and we got rewarded.”
Nathan Staios, Will Cuylle and Tyler Angle also scored for the Spitfires.
The scoring started early when Douglas beat Sting netminder Cameron Lamour at 3:11 of the first period. Brayden Guy replied at 5:51, but Playfair restored the Spitfires’ lead just over a minute later at 6:54. “We scored that first one and it swung the momentum, I felt,” Letowski said. “We pushed them for most of the way after that.” Staios scored on a power play late in the period for a 3-1 lead at the intermission.
The Spitfires finished 3-for-6 with a man advantage, while the Sting were 1-for-2.
“Our power play has been a little bit of an issue for us all year,” Letowski said. “It came up big tonight.
“I don’t think we’ve done that all year — score three power-play goals. Any time you do that, you’ve got a good chance to win.” Mitch Eliot, Jacob Perreault and Sean Josling had the other goals for the Sting. They could never get closer than three goals after the Spitfires took the 5-1 lead. The Spitfires sent 33 shots at Lamour.
The Sting have lost four in a row. The Spitfires, meanwhile, have looked good lately, Letowski said. “We had a real tough schedule the last, like, 15 games,” he said. “We were playing a lot of the top teams in the conference. I actually didn’t hate our game. We were just having a tough time getting results against those teams, but we’re going pretty good now. “We’ve got points in five of our last six games and we’re feeling pretty good about ourselves.”
It was a good offensive effort. Played pretty simple, we didn’t turn a lot of pucks over and we got rewarded.