After two exciting, fan-pleasing games on the weekend local fans were hoping for more of the same when the Drayton Valley Thunder came to town on Tuesday night.
Not!
A constant parade to the penalty box and two five-on-three goals against was a good lesson for the locals that some things haven’t changed much in the Canada Games Arena.
New people, same old story . . . and a result that was all too familiar to last season – a 5-2 loss to the visiting Drayton Valley Thunder.
The three-goal spread did flatter the visitors as two of the goals were of the empty net variety in a game the Storm probably deserved a better fate.
Despite spending almost half the time in the penalty box and killing penalty after penalty through the first two periods, the Storm still had a chance with their own powerplay late in the third to tie the game when the score was 3-2.
Drayton Valley ended up scoring twice into the empty cage in the last two minutes to make it more lopsided than it really was.
The Storm had taken 1-0 and 2-1 leads, but each time the Thunder got back into the game on two-man advantages.
Gus Corealle opened the scoring on a beautiful individual effort for his fifth of the season at 16:33 of the first, but that was followed up almost immediately by penalties to Spencer Mault and then Sasha Larocque and a Drayton Valley two-man-advantage tally at 19:20 off the stick of Tyler Hart.
Tanner Labbe put the Storm ahead 2-1 at 15:16 of the second and that was followed up by penalties to Devin Case at 16:35 and then Larocque at 17:31 and then Jeremey Barriault at 19:08.
Hart scored his second two-man advantage goal at 19:29 to tie the game at 2-2.
The game winner, off the stick of Trevor Poirier, came at 8:56 of the third at even strength. Jordan Baillie and Nathan Smith then salted it away with the empty netters.
Nick Kulmanovsky was in net for the Storm and faced 34 shots playing while while allowing three goals while Marc Olivier Daigle at the other end looked at 28 shots.
The loss was the third in five games for the Storm and the first at home.
They get the weekend off before heading to Spruce Grove to take on the Saints next Tuesday.