Guelph Storm coach George Burnett wasn't mincing words Saturday night after his team downed the Kingston Frontenacs 4-2 at the Sleeman Centre to extend its winning streak to six.
"I'm not going to make excuses," said Burnett, his mood a stark contrast to the celebratory sounds emanating from the Storm dressing room.
"The entire hockey game wasn't that great in my mind. I thought they deserved to win today, I thought their work and their compete was much better than ours."
The Storm coach was not wrong.
Guelph was pretty lousy for the first two periods (all three if you ask their coach) and was pretty much saved by its power play, which connected three times on the night.
"Some of the choices, the decisions and the lack of support and whatever were a little concerning," Burnett said.
"It's nice to find a way to win hockey games, but I think that we understand that what we saw tonight was one of our less than strong efforts from a compete standpoint."
Burnett hoped that his team didn't take Kingston, who have won just once in 18 games this season, lightly.
"You have to learn that any given opponent can win on any given night. If we start watching the standings ... we're not in a position that we can do that. There may be some teams (that can) but we're not there," Burnett said.
"It's not acceptable to ever think you're going to have an easy time of it. They're working their tails off and it very easily could have been much different than 2-1 at the end of the second tonight.
The turning point came early in the third, when Kingston's Nick King was given a five-minute major for cross checking for a nasty cross-check to the back of Guelph's Eric Uba during a goalmouth scramble.
Guelph tied and took the lead during that extended man advantage.
"I didn't see it. I wasn't sure what kind of hit it was, but obviously it was strong enough to warrant the call I suppose."
The Storm's dynamic duo was at it again Saturday, with Pavel Gogolev and Cam Hillis each picking up three points on the night. The two have a combined 46 points in the last 10 games.
Gogolev, Keegan Stevenson, Cedric Ralph and Josh Wainman had the Storm goals.
It was Gogolev's power play goal, a long wrist shot through a crowd, that tied the game, then his pretty feed to Ralph at the side of the net for the easy tap in that put Guelph ahead 3-2.
Guelph plays at home against Owen Sound on Friday then hosts the Saginaw Spirit in a 4 p.m. game on Saturday.
