KITCHENER – Please excuse four Guelph Storm defencemen if they fell asleep in their post-game pizza somewhere along Highway 7 Friday night.
Shorthanded on the back end for the second straight night, the foursome of Garrett McFadden, Kyle Rhodes, Ryan Merkley and Dmitri Samorukov logged tones of ice time and turned in a first rate effort in a huge 3-2 win over the Kitchener Rangers at The Aud.
“That might have been our best defensive effort of the year,” Storm coach Jarrod Skalde said.
“We bent a little bit here and there, but we shut the door there in the third. I’m proud of our guys.
“The defence played a lot. Sometimes it was a struggle to get them off,” Skalde said, “but it was a total team effort tonight.”
The Storm scored three times in the first period, surrendered a pair of goals in the second period, then hung on for the gutsy win.
“When you have shorter numbers, simplifying your game is a big thing,” McFadden said of going primarily with four defencemen.
“You have to mentally prepare for what you’re going to face: chip pucks out, not rush the puck as much and make the simple plays all night.
“You don’t want to be rushing up the ice, taking chances, when you know you have to go on the next shift,” McFadden said.
With Austin Hall and Levi Tetrault both out of the lineup with concussions and fill-in Brock Phillips not available, it was up to the top four to pretty much play the whole game.
Recent addition Nolan Makkonen had a few shifts early on and James McEwan also did some early part-time duty on defence, but for the second half of the game the Storm went with four defencemen.
“We got a couple of goals early and that was huge after the way the ending to (Thursday) night’s game went down,” said McFadden, referring to a bad goal with 24 seconds left in regulation that led to a 3-2 loss in Niagara.
The Storm won by playing simple, not taking chances and staying out of the penalty box, something that has been a bit of a challenge at times this season.
“The message going into the game was that we needed to stick to our structure and we needed an effort,” Skalde said. “We did that.”
Rhodes scored what proved to be the winner at 16:26 of the opening period when his point shot hit a body and blooped over the shoulder of Rangers goaltender Luke Opilka.
Givani Smith and Luke Burghardt had the other Guelph goals.
Liam Herbst made 32 saves in the Storm net.
Elijah Roberts and and Greg Meireles, both in the second period, scored for the Rangers, who lost OHL scoring leader Adam Mascherin to an upper body injury midway through the game.
Guelph plays in Windsor on Sunday afternoon.
