STORMY WEATHER
Guelph blanks Spitfires 5-0 at WFCU Centre.
JIM PARKER The frustration was evident early for the Windsor Spitfires and it never seemed to subside.
The Spitfires were whistled for the game’s first three penalties and seemed to be battling on-ice officials as much as the Guelph Storm Thursday.
Eventually, that frustration got the best of the Spitfires in a 5-0 loss to the Storm before 5,565 at the WFCU Centre.
“I think we were fine five-onfive, but you get three penalties (in the first period) and it kind of kills your momentum and we didn’t respond,” Spitfires forward Derek Schoenmakers said.
The Storm and Spitfires are built much in the same mould with young rosters that rely on hard work most nights to find success on the scoreboard.
“The Windsor Spitfires play hard and they’re a tough team to play against,” Storm head coach Scott Walker said.
“I think it’s good for our guys to see that, especially the young ones because it’s tough to win in this league.”
But the Spitfires could only find frustration against the Storm and it only continued to boil while Windsor was killing off Guelph’s fourth power play of the game. Windsor’s Brady Vail got a step on Guelph defenceman Andrey Pedan, who managed to break up the play from behind.
The Spitfires wanted a call while the Storm turned back up ice with Scott Kosmachuk getting loose in the slot and scoring the opening goal.
“It’s a missed call,” said Boughner, who saw Vail get a 10-minute misconduct for protesting the play.
After killing off five Guelph power plays, the Storm finally clicked on their sixth attempt when linesman Ryan Lachine called Windsor for too many men on the ice. Guelph’s Brock McGinn scored on a backhander seconds later to put the Spitfires down 2-0 after 40 minutes.
“I take some of the blame because as captain I should be calming guys down,” Spitfires captain Saverio Posa said. “You can’t worry about the last shift, you can only move forward.”
Windsor had a few power-play chances as well, but Guelph was solid in closing down the passing lanes and killed off all five chances.
“I don’t know what it was, if we were trying to do too much or what, but we just weren’t clicking,” Schoenmakers said.
The Storm added three power-play goals in the final period and finished with four powerplay goals.
“Our penalty kill spent a lot of time on the ice,” Schoenmakers said. “The simple fact is you can’t give a team that many power plays and expect to win.”
Zack Mitchell pushed Guelph’s lead to 3-0 in the first five minutes of the period and Ben Harpur and Mitchell added power-play goals in the final two minutes to complete the scoring.
Storm goalie Garret Sparks finished with 23 saves for the shutout while Jaroslav Pavelka faced 44 shots in the net.
“It’s early in the season and the big thing is you can’t panic,” Posa said. “We have to stay out of the box and make sure we bring the intensity every night.”
The Spitfires are back in action tonight with a road game in London against the defending league champion Knights (7:30 p.m., cable 11, live blog at windsorstar.com).