LONDON - Bad luck has nothing to do with it, says George Burnett.
"This isn't luck. This is details," Burnett said after his team blew another late lead Tuesday night in London.
The Guelph Storm was up 2-1 with 3:07 left in the game before eventually falling 5-2 to the London Knights at Budweiser Gardens, the last two goals coming into an empty net.
Last Sunday the Storm blew a two-goal lead late before losing to the Kitchener Rangers and last Friday they lost in overtime.
Just don't tell Storm coach Burnett his team is snake bitten."We were in a pretty good situation tonight and we have been in a number of games recently, but we haven't been able to finish the deal."
He rhymed off a number of things the team didn't do well in the final minutes of Tuesday's game while trying to nurse the lead.
"We got into some face-off issues, we weren't in puck lanes, losing puck battles and had a couple of chances with the goalie out ..." Burnett said.
"When you're up 2-1 with three minutes to go we've got to find a better formula to get the job done," he said.
"It's easy to point fingers at this particular time, but I think the best thing now is to go through and look at a number of games recently where we've found ways to not get the job done."
Guelph was playing a pretty solid road game Tuesday and led 2-1 after two periods on goals by Cedric Ralph and Isaac Ratcliffe.
They were also defending well late in the third period, but an accidental high stick by Mark Shoemaker put the Knights on the power play with four minutes remaining.
They pulled their goalie to make it a six-on-four advantage and Evan Bouchard's wrister found its way past Storm goaltender Anthony Popovich for the tying goal with 3:07 on the clock.
"I don't know what the ref saw, I kinda got hit a little bit and it threw me off," Popovich said.
Then with 2:05 left in regulation Liam Foudy tipped a Bouchard point shot past the Storm goaltender.
"It's obviously tough and everybody is battling in those last five minutes," Popovich said.
"The last couple of weeks it's just not been going our way, but everybody's got to keep working hard and not think about it too much."
With six games left in the regular season, Guelph sits in sixth place in the Western Conference, one point up on Saginaw and two points up on Windsor. They are seven points back of fifth place.
Guelph will be home Friday night to face Saginaw.
