One of the first ones to leave the room when things aren't going well is Lady Luck.
The Guelph Storm turned in a pretty solid effort against the high flying Saginaw Spirit Sunday at the Sleeman Centre, but still came out on the wrong end of a 5-2 loss.
The winning goal was a shot that was headed a foot wide of the Storm net before it deflected in off a player's leg. The insurance goal was a pedestrian seeing-eye wrister from the point that hit some bodies and Storm goaltender Brayden Gillespie never saw. The fifth goal was an empty-netter.
"I actually thought we deserved a better fate tonight and could have won that game pretty easily," Storm coach Chad Wiseman said. "Some unlucky bounces and some missed opportunities."
"I think we were a little but unlucky. A couple of posts. A couple of missed empty nets," said Wiseman. "We had two blocked shots that went off us, went off them and went in. Those are completely unlucky goals."
Guelph trailed 1-0 after one period and 3-1 after two. Braeden Bowman's second of the game early in the third made it interesting, but with just under four minutes remaining Jorian Donovan's wrister from the point made it's way through a crowd to make it 4-2.
The Storm managed just 17 shots on net.
"I'm not a big fan of the shot clock. I don't put a lot of value in the shot clock," Wiseman said. "Believe it or not, chance-wise we actually out-chanced them according to our analytics.
"A lot of missed opportunities, a lot of missed nets, a lot of posts. We had our chances.We had our chances, so I don't get too wrapped up in the shot clock."
With 10 games left in the regular season, Guelph is 2-12 in its past 14 contests. If the playoffs started today seventth-place Guelph would meet the Saginaw, but they are only four points ahead of eighth-place Flint.
Zander Veccia may be facing a suspension after being given a game misconduct for something that was said during a third-period scrum. No word on what exactly he said, but to get a game misconduct it had to be something fairly significant.
Parker Snelgrove, Gavin Grundner and Brayden Hislop again missed the game with injuries. Rylan Singh was the healthy scratch.
Guelph will host the London Knights Wednesday in a 6:30 p.m. start.
