When you're a rebuilding hockey team, everyone knows there will be nights like this.
For the first time this season the Guelph Storm was on the wrong end of a one-sided score Friday at the Sleeman Centre, falling 7-1 to the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds.
Sandwiched between two fairly decent periods was a horrible second period that saw Sault Ste. Marie blow the game wide open.
They scored five unanswered goals in the second, taking over a game that was 1-1 after 20 minutes. Four of those goals came in a nine-minute span in the first half of the period.
"We learn from it. It was a lesson," said Storm coach George Burnett, who knows he can't overreact, and doesn't want his players to overreact, to nights like Friday.
"There was a 10-minute span in the second period where obviously we really weren't good at all. We didn't really touch the puck at all: we didn't start with it and we didn't have it. They move and they move well when they have the puck and we paid the big price."
Rookie goaltender Owen Bennett played the first 40 minutes, allowing six goals on 23 shots, although in his defence there was an awful lot of quality in that relatively low shot count. Call-up Tanner Wickware mopped up the third.
Rebound goals, Soo players wide open in the slot and several turnovers were the determining factors on the majority of the pucks that ended up in the Guelph net.
Burnett was quick to defend the 17-year-old Bennett.
"I'm not even looking at Owen tonight," the Storm coach said.
"I'm not concerned about Owen's game at all. I thought he battled and we let him down. I'm not going to let him off the hook, because I know he's a proud kid that wants to stop every puck that goes his way, but we let him down tonight for sure.
"The lack of support, the type of choices that we made, the turnovers, the stick checks ... we've got lots of great video and it's not going to lie and it's not going to be fun to watch.
Cam Hillis had Guelph's lone goal, a nice one-on-one move to beat a defenceman before firing a shot past Soo netminder Christian Propp.
Guelph played without a pair of key veterans Friday, with defenceman Owen Lalonde (illness) and goaltender Nico Daws (upper body injury) missing the game due to illness. Neither are likely to play Saturday when the Storm travels to Erie to take on the Otters.
Next home game is Friday, also against Erie.
