A few years ago a Junior A coach hired a hypnotist to help get his team out of a regular season losing slump.
It worked!
The team went on to the league championship final that season after getting the “help” from an unlikely source.
The Grande Prairie Storm coaching staff might want to consider something similar to help the club get over their current slump – eight losses in a row away from Revolution Place Arena with the eighth being a 6-0 defeat at the hands of the Camrose Kodiaks on Sunday.
What might help is convincing the players every building in the AJHL is called Revolution Place – a facility where the Storm, at 11-4-2, have one of the best home ice records in the league.
They hope to improve on that as they close out the 2017 portion of their schedule with games in Revolution Place Arena this Wednesday (Whitecourt Wolverines) and Dec. 29-30 against the Spruce Grove Saints.
Sunday's game ended a three-game southern road trip that included three games in three nights including the afternoon tilt Sunday after an evening game in Drumheller against the Dragons on Saturday.
The loss in Camrose didn't affect the Storm's standing in the North Division. They remain at 35 points, one up on the Sherwood Park Crusaders and 13 back of the Wolverines. They did lose the game advantage they had on the Crusaders. Both teams have now played 34 games.
The Kodiaks led 1-0 after the first and 3-0 going into the final frame.
For the second night in a row the Storm gave up an important goal at an important time. The Kodiaks took a 2-0 lead on a goal by Kyler Krupka while the Storm were on the powerplay at 7:57 of the second.
Brock Bremer had two for the Kodiaks while Zach Vinnell, Carson Welke and Nic Correale had the others.
Rookie netminder Ethan Slobodzian went the distance for the Storm facing 43 shots while GP fired 19 pucks at Luke Lush, who recorded his first shutout of the season.