Sarnia Sting goaltender Cameron Lamour put on quite a performance Friday night at the Sleeman Centre in backing his team to a 6-2 win over the Guelph Storm.
But not all of it was one he'd like to remember.
No one quite knew what was going on 31 seconds into the second period when, following a whistle at the other end of the ice, Lamour bolted out of the Sting net and ran down the tunnel toward the Sting dressing room.
An injury? Equipment malfunction?
Nope. He'd just thrown up in the Sarnia goal crease. Through his mask.
"For some reason I'm puking before games and I just couldn't hold it in going into the second period and it dripped out all over my cage," said Lamour, taking the incident in good stride.
"I didn't want to make it too obvious, but I looked at my cage and thought 'shit, I've got to go to the bench,'" he said.
That left backup Ethan Langevin to come in and play 59 seconds while Lamour got things cleaned up. That was after linesman Kevin Hastings grabbed a squeegee and did some cleaning up of his own in the Sarnia goal crease.
"My mind's not nervous, but my stomach, every game, it just turns. No idea why."
He knows the teasing from teammates will likely be relentless for a while. He already heard it from the Guelph players.
"As I was skating back to the net their players were hanging over the bench yipping at me," he laughed.
"Hopefully it only happens once. I don't want to do it again in front of 3,000 people at home."
Bodily functions aside, Lamour, a third-year goalie with a 4.16 career goals-against average, turned in a brilliant performance, making countless good saves.
The heavy shot count helped, he said.
"Way better than a game when there's only 20 shots," said the native of Naughton, Ont., 25 minutes north of Sudbury.
"When they're up around 40 shots and they keep coming at you, you're way dialled into the game."
Lamour's heroics aside, it was a terrible night for the Storm, who looked disjointed right from the opening face off.
They were lucky it was 1-1 early in the second, but their luck ran out as the Sting scored four unanswered goals in a span of three minutes, 10 seconds and never looked back.
"We need to be a lot harder to play against," Storm coach George Burnett said. "Tonight they were clearly the better team.
"The first couple of shifts kind of set the tone," said Burnett. "Our power play was outworked by their penalty kill. We lost most foot races and we lost most puck battles and we got exactly what we deserved.
"I'm not going to make any excuses. In the big picture, maybe this will help us and how we respond tomorrow will be extremely important for us."
The score wasn't the only bad news for Guelph Friday night.
Centre Cam Hillis, just back from a knee injury, left the game in the first period with an upper body injury. He went to hospital for x-rays. The results weren't known immediately following the game.
The same two teams go at it again Saturday night in Sarnia. Sunday the Storm hosts the Kingston Frontenacs in a 2 p.m. start.
