Sometimes there's no sugar coating it.
The Guelph Storm squandered a very winnable game to the Flint Firebirds Friday night at the Sleeman Centre, falling 5-4 in overtime to the OHL's best road team.
The Storm, 1-6 in its past seven games, blew a 3-0 lead then turned the puck over on both the game-tying and game-winning goals.
"The second period and most of the third was not acceptable for this group," bluntly stated Storm coach George Burnett.
"We rolled four lines the other night in Sarnia and had good energy throughout the game. I can't continue to watch our young kids sit on the bench ... if our older guys are going to make the kind of mistakes that they made that led to the loss tonight.
"Not good choices. Not smart. And it's not fun to be part of."
Guelph led 3-0 after the first period on goals by Brayden Guy, Danny Zhilkin and Matt Poitras.
Three unanswered goals in the second period saw the Firebirds tie things up before a Matt Papais tip in front of the net late in the period gave the Storm the edge heading into the third.
Riley Piercey tied it for the visitors on the power play laste in the period, seconds after Guelph's Sasha Pastujov failed on an opportunity to get the puck over his own blueline.
Coulson Pitre won it at 3:41 of overtime, finishing off a two-on-one break that came about after Poitras turned the puck over deep in Flint territory.
"Give them credit, they worked hard," said Burnett, whose team got a break in the third when a Flint goal was disallowed for goaltender interference.
"We got a break there and you would expect us to respond after that, but we didn't," Burnett said.
Much of the third period was a series of highlight reel saves by Guelph's Jacob Oster and Flint's Nathaniel Day, who replaced Luke Cavallin after the first period.
Oster, much like the team in general, said he is searching for that consistency in his game.
"I think in that first period we played pretty well and we were up 3-0, but then defensively we sort of collapsed a bit. I can't blame the team for that, I definitely didn't do my part in that second period," Oster said.
"I'm still searching for that full 60 minutes in my game. I want to make sure I can get that, go the whole way. In that second period I didn't play my best, but other than that I thought I was pretty solid.
"As a team we have to fill out that full 60 minutes. We can't turn pucks over. We have to do the dirty work."
Guelph plays in Saginaw Saturday night, in London Wednesday, then hosts Saginaw on Friday.
