You might get away with mistakes against some of the league's lesser lights.
You might get away with bad penalties against team's that can't make you pay.
But you're not going to get away with either of those things against an top team like the Niagara IceDogs.
Bad penalties and costly mistakes sunk the Guelph Storm Sunday afternoon at the Sleeman Centre as a third period comeback fell just short in a 4-3 loss to the IceDogs.
Guelph's Anthony Popovich was also outplayed by Niagara's Stephen Dhillon in the goaltending department.
"Our discipline was very questionable," Storm coach George Burnett said. "We pushed the first 15 minutes of the second period but that was nullified by a couple of bad penalties that hurt us big time."
Dom Commisso took a bad holding penalty in the offensive zone that led to one Niagara goal, then Isaac Ratcliffe got caught up in a personal beef with Niagara's Matthew Brassard for another penalty that led to an IceDogs power play marker.
"Kids are kids. We know that everybody is trying to get an upper hand. But if you look at the quality of our penalties today they were very poor," Burnett said.
"There's no question that when we are pushing, we're a good team ... but we wasted a little bit of energy today on things that didn't have anything to do with the hockey game. Lesson learned."
Guelph's penalty killing unit has sunk to 14th in the league, but Burnett isn't necessarily concerned.
"No. Not really at all. We need whoever is in the net to be a little stronger in those situations, we need to block a few more shots than we have lately. Both of the goals today were short side, high shots."
Niagara made Dom Commisso and Isaac Ratcliffe pay for a couple of bad penalties with power play markers. They also jumped on a godawful turnover by Fedor Gordeev in front of his own net for what would prove to be the winning goal late in the second period.
It was a 4-1 game heading into the third, but Guelph goals by Sean Durzi and Owen Lalonde made it a one-goal game with just under 12 minutes left in regulation.
But the equalizer never came, with Dhillon standing tall all game in a 49-save effort.
"I think we've just got to play a full 60 minutes. You saw what we did in the third period and if we'd have played the whole game like that I think it would have been a different story tonight," said Storm defenceman Markus Phillips.
"We need more bodies in front. A lot of our shots were from the outside and we really weren't generating any offence. It was one shot, then regroup," Phillips said. "We have to sustain some offence."
Next up for Guelph is a home game Friday against Owen Sound. Saturday they play in Erie.
