The Sarnia Sting fell to the visiting Kitchener Rangers 5-1 Sunday afternoon, snapping a two game win streak where the Sting scored a combined 16 goals.
Marko Sikic scored Sarnia's lone goal, Ben Gaudreau made 31 saves and the Sting's power play went 0 for 4 after converting seven times with the man advantage over the past two games.
Rangers forward Francesco Pinelli scored off of a Sting turnover at 1:25 of the first period to make it 1-0. At 7:43, Sikic forced a turnover at Kitchener's end of the ice before sending a shot through the five-hole of Pavel Cajun to make it 1-1.
The Rangers regained a one goal lead at 3:55 of the second period on a shot from Jack Harper. The road team would score two more goals in the middle frame to lead 4-1 after 40 minutes.
The Sting outshot Kitchener 11 to 8 in the third period but failed to beat the Rangers netminder. Roman Schmidt scored an empty-net goal for Kitchener at 16:33 to make it 5-1.
Sting head coach Alan Letang said it was a completely different Sting team Sunday than their previous two home wins.
"No intensity, we looked tired, we looked slow mentality, we couldn't find ways to just stay in the game and manufacture a point, just buy our time until we got going," he said. "That's the disappointing thing for me -- we show flashes of the team we had to be to be successful and compete, and then we default sometimes to being the easy team to play against."
Letang said his team was able to put up 16 goals over the previous two games by keeping things simple, rather than sticking to the perimeter like they did Sunday.
"It's like that mindset -- 'okay, I'm tired, my legs are heavy, I'm a little bit sore because we've played a lot,' yeah, but so is every other team in the league," said Letang. "If you go into the net, you might get crosschecked, but you feel better when the rebound's there and you get to bang it in a couple of times."
The Sting are back in action Wednesday night when the club hosts London -- coverage on CHOK (103.9 FM/1070 AM) begins at 6:30 p.m.
