Sometimes you have to glue one together.
Shorthanded, a top forward forced to play defence and trailing the Sarnia Sting 3-1 heading into the third period at the Sleeman Centre Friday night, the Guelph Storm somehow found a way to pull out a big win.
A pair of goals by Matt Poitras tied the game and then Braeden Bowman scored the winner on the power play with 11 seconds left in regulation.
Poitras was in on that one too, as it was his wrist shot that Sting goaltender Anson Thornton stopped before Bowman chipped in the rebound.
"It was a great character win," said Poitras of what was Guelph's third victory this week.
"We're going to take any win possible. Tonight was kind of ugly, but we managed to come back in the third. We all knew we had to step up."
With two key defencemen out with injuries and another, Cam Supryka, falling ill before the game, Guelph was down to five blueliners on the night, which included lightly-used Jakob MacRae and Zach Sandhu.
Things got worse midway through the second period when Michael Buchinger was tossed for a post-whistle cross-check that cut Sarnia's Zach FIlak.
Sarnia scored twice on the major and then added a third power play goal when Sandhu was sent off for boarding.
That erased a 1-0 first period lead courtesy of a Jake Karabela shorthanded goal that came when Thornton got caught wandering.
With only two experienced defencemen left on the bench, George Burnett turned to forward Danny Zhilkin to fill in on defence in the third, and he performed admirably.
Burnett was thrilled with finding a way to win, thrilled with the 30-plus minute efforts of Luka Profaca and Cam Allen on the blueline and thrilled that Zhilkin answered the call.
He was not thrilled with the penalties taken by Buchinger and others.
"I've been in the game a long time and it was one of the more ... I'll say selfish ... periods that I've seen," Burnett said.
"It's just not the way we're going to be successful at any point in time, and with our back end looking like it is right now it's just really unfortunate. Michael is too important for us on the ice for him to take himself out of that game."
He said the Storm didn't have much going "at all" for much of the game.
"They deserve all the credit. They were smarter than we were, they outworked us and we found a way," Burnett said. "Sometimes it's easy to play when you're down 3-1. You can play a little looser."
Guelph scored twice on the power play in the third and one of the other goals came just after a penalty to Sarnia had expired.
All three of the Sting's goals came with the man advantage.
Guelph is in Kitchener Sunday afternoon. Next home game is Friday, March 25, also against Kitchener.
