The winning streak was going to end at some point, but the way it ended is likely the most disappointing part.
After opening up the Ontario Hockey League regular season with three consecutive wins, the Soo Greyhounds fell behind early and eventually dropped a 7-4 decision to the Sarnia Sting on Friday night at Progressive Auto Sales Arena in Sarnia.
It was the first game of a three-game Thanksgiving weekend trip for the club, which entered Friday on the heels of a shootout win over the London Knights Wednesday night in the Sault.
“Unacceptable right from the start,” said Greyhounds forward Jordan D’Intino. “We got skated through a lot. The rush kept beating us and our F3 wasn’t disciplined enough.”
D’Intino added that “there were signs of pushback after 3-0, but just all around, it wasn’t good enough.”
“Everyone has to be better,” D’Intino added.
For Greyhounds coach John Dean, following Friday’s result, he knows exactly what he wants to see on game two of the road trip.
“I want to see an angry team,” Dean said of Saturday’s game in Flint. “We shouldn’t have to show any video. We should see a very motivated, angry, structured team. That’s all there is to it.”
An early mistake put the team behind the proverbial eight-ball early and made recovering from it tough.
“We had an unbelievable first shift and then a critical error on the second one and you give a team life and some excitement over there,” Dean said. “The grinded us all game. They protected their blueline. We did a poor job responding to that style of play. We gave up way too many chances and really started getting away from our game as we got frustrated over the course of the game.”
For the Sting, the start was as perfect as could be.
“We started off the right way. We came out hot,” Sarnia forward Marko Sikic said in a post-game interview with Sarnia’s YourTV.
Just 37 seconds into the game, Sarnia opened the scoring as Sikic beat Greyhounds starter Charlie Schenkel high stick side on a breakaway pass from Jacob LeBlanc.
Roman Kukumberg made it a 2-0 game, potting a rebound from the right faceoff circle after a shot by Andrew LeBlanc was tipped on the way to the net by Sikic and stopped by Schenkel before ending up on the stick of the import forward.
Sikic extended the lead at 13:17, beating Schenkel with a shot from the slot high glove side. The goal chased Schenkel from the Greyhounds net for the remainder of the period.
After taking a timeout as well following the goal, the Greyhounds got on the scoreboard 42 seconds later when Christopher Brown beat Sarnia netminder Ben Gaudreau high glove side from the left faceoff circle to make it a 3-1 game.
The Greyhounds made it a one-goal game 1:54 later on a goal by overage forward Jordan D’Intino. The veteran forward beat Gaudreau on a rebound from the right circle after rookie forward Travis Hayes had a shot stopped from the other circle on the man advantage.
With 15 seconds to go in the period, Sarnia defenceman Mitch Young took a shot from the top of the right faceoff circle that found its way through traffic and past Landon Miller on the power play to send the game into the first intermission with the Sting leading 4-2.
With Schenkel back between the pipes, Sarnia took a 5-2 lead when a point shot from Owen MacDonald deflected in off former Greyhound Daylen Moses at 8:03.
Sikic picked up his third goal of the night with just over five minutes to go in the second period when he split a pair of Sault defencemen near the blueline and proceeded to beat Schenkel stick side on a breakaway to make it 6-2 Sting.
Finnish defenceman Arttu Karki scored for the Greyhounds 3:39 into the third period when he beat Gaudreau with a shot that found its way past a pair of bodies in the slot and beat the Sarnia netminder glove side.
Moses picked up his second of the night at 10:47 of the third when he beat Schenkel from the right circle high short side.
Andrew Gibson capped off the scoring with one minute to go, beating Gaudreau wit a point shot on the power play through some traffic in close.
Gibson finished the night with a goal and two assists to pace the Greyhounds offensively while D’Intino had one of each.
Schenkel stopped 18 of 24 shots in the loss while Miller gave up a goal on the lone shot he faced for the Greyhounds.
“That’s just not his night,” Dean said of Schenkel. “He’s a much better goalie than that. We saw that against Brantford, and we saw that against London. He knows he’s better than that. We’re all going to have off nights and Charlie bailed us out in the Brantford game and he was unbelievable against London. I’m disappointed we couldn’t bail him out tonight.”
Asked about going back to Schenkel after pulling the veteran following Sarnia’s third goal, Dean said the decision was two-fold.
“I thought Millsy, his six minutes could have been better, and the second thing is we wanted to show Charlie the confidence we have in him to reset and get back at it and instil that confidence that we have in him,” Dean said.
Sikic had four points for the Sting, picking up an assist in addition to his three-goal night. In addition to the two-goal night from Moses, Jacob LeBlanc had three assists while Andrew LeBlanc chipped in with a pair of helpers.
Gaudreau stopped 19 shots for Sarnia.
Following a game Saturday night in Flint against the Firebirds, the Greyhounds wrap up the weekend road trip on Monday afternoon with a game in Windsor against the Spitfires.
On Friday afternoon, Hockey Canada announced that Dean will be one of two coaches leading Canadian teams at the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge in P.E.I. next month.