Spitfires tripped up by struggling Steelheads
MISSISSAUGA The Windsor Spitfires made the mistake of feeling a little too good about their game on Sunday.
They were coming off an overtime loss to the No. 1-ranked team in the Canadian Hockey League and had beaten former co-owner and general manager Warren Rychel’s club in a shootout. So, when the Spitfires hit the road to face a Mississauga Steelheads team with just one win in its first five games, they got away from what had made them successful in recent games.
“We kind of got away from our game,” Spitfires overage defenceman Thomas Stevenson said. “Our first period was good and we kind of assumed they didn’t have a very good team. We took them lightly and they capitalized on it.”
Dominating play in the first period and grabbing a pair of one-goal leads, the Spitfires became penalty prone in the second period allowing the Steelheads four power-play chances in the middle period and another in the third that turned the game around.
Mississauga scored twice with the man advantage to rally for a 4-3 win over the Spitfires before 1,276 at Paramount Fine Foods Centre.
“I think it was one of those games where we got stuck in the box and they’ve got a good power play,” Spitfires centre Tyler Angle said. “I think sometimes, we got a little too lazy, guys weren’t getting back and that affected us in the end.”
Early in the season, the Spitfires have shown that when it can play five-one-five hockey, they can roll four lines and grind out wins.
“That’s the strength of our team, when we just roll and play five-onfive and there are no penalties,”
Spitfires head coach Trevor Letowski said. “It’s still early in the year, but the games we’ve taken chunks of penalties, we get off our game because we lose all of our tempo. We took four penalties in the second period and it’s frustrating. It’s a game I thought we should have had and we kind of let it slip.”
Angle and Kyle Mcdonald sandwiched goals around a Mississauga goal by Thomas Harley to put Windsor up 2-1 after 20 minutes.
However, the four minor penalties slowed Windsor’s game in the second period. Mississauga outshot the Spitfires 13-5 in the period and James Hardie and a power-play goal by Cole Schwindt allowed the Steelheads to take a 3-2 lead before Egor Afanasyev’s goal with 16 seconds left in the period tied the game after 40 minutes.
Windsor began to take control of the territorial play again in the third period, but Afanasyev was called for tripping in the neutral zone and Hardie got his second goal of the game on the power play and the Spitfires were never to pull even.
“We kind of figured it out, got going in the third period, but it’s a fine line now in a tied game in the third period and a bad penalty and it’s game over,” Letowski said. “It’s one of those ones that could have gone either way and we came out on the short end.”