With its offense failing to fire on all cylinders, the Elmira Sugar Kings dropped two of their last three games. The lone victory came in a match that saw just one goal scored.
In fact, the midweek tilt against the London Nationals, a 5-2 loss, would be Elmira’s best output, as a 1-0 win over Waterloo Friday would be followed by a 2-1 defeat at the hands of Komoka on Sunday.
“I’d say Wednesday, the effort was still there, it just wasn’t as consistent. But I really like the way that we competed for 60 minutes on Friday and Sunday, and we just haven’t been able to reap the rewards of all that hard work that we’ve been putting in. Sometimes, that’s the way it goes,” said head coach Dane Horvat of the ups and downs of the past week.
On October 23 in London, the Kings found themselves down early on goals from Connor Clark and Jeremy Hirsh before the game was seven minutes old.
Joey Martin’s goal at 11:22, with assists going to Ryan Forwell and Nolan Battler, would make it a 2-1 game, which is how things would stand going into the first intermission.
In the second, Forwell’s power-play goal, from Liam Eveleigh and Battler, tied things up, but it was all London after that. The home team went ahead for good when Ryan Nichols scored with just under five minutes left in the period.
The third saw Nichols strike again on the power play, with Joshua Lepain’s empty-netter sealing Elmira’s fate in the 5-2 decision.
Shots were 33-24 in favour of the Nationals, who went 1-5 on the power play, while Elmira was 1-8. Elmira netminder Reed Straus stopped 28 of the 32 shots he faced in the losing effort.
In Waterloo Friday night to face the Siskins, the Kings needed overtime to settle things, after neither team could pot a goal during regulation play. Sam Ratcliffe’s goal at 2:17 of OT gave Elmira the win. Assists went to Nate Gravelle and Battler.
The home side outshot the visitors 33-29, with goaltender Elliott Hartwick turning aside everything to post the shutout. Elmira’s power play went 0-6, while the Siskins were 0-3.
“It was good to see Elliot Hartwick play a really awesome game. He made some really big saves for us on that end of things. On the other side of things, we were just not able to capitalize on some really grade-A chances that we had,” said the coach of the lack of goal-scoring.
It was another low-scoring affair when the Sugar Kings returned home Sunday night.
After a scoreless first period, the visiting Kings from Komoka netted two in the second – Seth Huygen at 1:34 and Senan Moore at 3:07 – to take a lead they wouldn’t give up. It was 2-0 after 40 minutes.
Elmira finally got on the board at 17:03 of the third courtesy of Martin’s seventh of the season, assisted by Luke Della Croce and Baeddan Pollett, but that was it for the scoring despite Elmira outshooting the visitors 43-19. It was just the second victory of the season for Komoka.
Elmira was 0-4 with the man advantage, while Komoka was 0-2. Straus took the loss.
“It seemed like in that game they were able to make the most of their chances – I think they might have had two chances, two quality chances to score, and they happened to make most of them. On our side, we had 25, maybe more, grade-A, quality scoring chances where we either unlucky on or hit the goalpost or their goalie made a nice save,” said Horvat.
The Sugar Kings (7-6-2) are in Ayr tonight (Thursday) to face the Centennials, who sit atop the GOJHL’s Eastern Conference standings with a record of 10-3. On the weekend, they welcome the Chatham Maroons (6-5) on Saturday night, then the Caledon Bombers (1-13) on Sunday. Game time both nights at the WMC is 7 p.m.
With the penalty kill having improved, the special-teams practice has been on the power play, which could have made a difference when scoring was hard to come by, said the coach.
“I think our power play hasn’t been good enough,” said Horvat. “We’ve identified that our penalty kill is improving steadily and our power play is opposite direction.”
Injuries haven’t helped with developing consistency – among those missing just now are Isaac Lorentz, Rhys McCloskey and Brett Warrilow – so the coaching staff is having to make some adjustments. The effort is there, says Horvat.
“You don’t always reap the rewards of your all your hard work right away, but if we can continue to stick with it, it’s going to come around, especially when we continue to get healthy and add bodies to our lineup.”
