Thursday night’s contest was a great way to kick off a three-game week for the Guelph Storm.
Guelph headed into Peterborough to take on the Petes and the Storm’s former first overall pick, Ryan Merkley, at the Peterborough Memorial Centre, walking away with a 5-3 victory over the fifth seed of the OHL‘s Eastern Conference.
This marked the first game in Peterborough between the two teams since the Storm traded their former star defenceman to the Petes on Dec. 14 in exchange for Pavel Gogolev and five draft picks.
The Storm opened up the game with powerful offence and an Alexey Toropchenko goal 1:13 into the opening bracket. That was quickly followed by goals from Keegan Stevenson 30 seconds later at 1:44, then Liam Hawel (10:55) and captain Isaac Ratcliffe (14:01) to close out the period.
That four-goal period for Guelph prompted Peterborough bench boss Rob Wilson to pull goaltender Hunter Jones from between the pipes and replace him with Tye Austin, who took over for the remainder of the game.
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The second period leaned in favour of the Peterborough Petes, who answered back with three goals of their own, first from Semyon Der-Arguchintsev a mere 0:59 seconds into the period. An Erik Cermak goal then came in at 3:55, and finally, Merkley recorded an assist on a power-play goal from Brady Hinz at the 5:47 mark, leaving Guelph scoreless throughout the entire middle bracket.
The Guelph Storm solidified their win in the third period, however, when Ratcliffe scored his second of the night into an open net at 19:38 to take the win 5-3.
Guelph outshot Peterborough 39 to 33 in the contest and ended the night zero for two on the power play, while Hinz’s power-play goal for the Petes was their only one of the night and ended the contest one for four with the extra man.
Austin technically remained perfect throughout the night, with the only goal scored being an empty-netter after taking over from Jones, and Anthony Popovich held down the fort in net for all 60 minutes for the Storm.
Guelph will see a few familiar faces again for the second night in a row this evening when they return to the Sleeman Centre to host the Owen Sound Attack.
Guelph also recently traded away forwards Barret Kirwin and Zach Poirier along with defenceman Mark Woolley and a slew of draft picks to the Attack for forwards Nick Suzuki and Zach Roberts and defenceman Sean Durzi.
Puck drop at the Sleeman Centre is scheduled for 7:30 p.m.
You can catch all the Storm hockey action live on 1460 CJOY with Larry Mellott, beginning with the pre-game show at 7:15 p.m.
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