By DAVE BORODY

When you face one of the hottest goalies in the Ontario Hockey League, you never know what might happen.

The Sarnia Sting peppered Kingston Frontenacs netminder Igor Bobkov with 44 shots, including a penalty shot and three breakaways.

In the end the Sting prevailed 4-1 in front of 3,266 fans Saturday night at the RBC Centre.

The victory gave the Sting back-to-back victories for the first time in almost a month. They remain fourth in the Western Conference, but are now just six points back of third place Kitchener.

Bobkov continued his fine play against the Sting after leading his team to a surprising 4-1 win over London 24 hours earlier.

“Igor played real well,” said Sting head coach Jacques Beaulieu. “He’s faced 100 shots in the last six periods. Give him credit. He’s worked hard here in North America to become a better goalie.”

The game was in doubt with five minutes left in regulation time as Sarnia held a slender 2-1 lead. But they scored twice in a span of three and a half minutes late in the game to put things out of reach.

“They were a pesky bunch,” said Beaulieu. “Give them credit. It’s a 2-1 game with five minutes left and our goalie has to stop a breakaway. There was no give. They are a young team and have a bright future with the young kids.”

Beaulieu added, “We were still turning the puck over a bit too much, but I thought we had some jump and our special teams were good.”

Brandon Hope turned aside 19 or 20 shots he faced to record his first victory in goal for the Sting since Nov. 4.

“This was a very important game for me,” said Hope. “It was the first game of the New Year and I wanted to start off well. When you play a team like Kingston, they come at you when you least expect it.”

Hope handled the question of his lack of playing time this season in a professional manner.

“We have a great team here in Sarnia and my role is to support the team any way I can. When I get the opportunity to play, I want to be able to play well and help us win. That’s what I am prepared to do the rest of the way.”

Beaulieu said the win for Hope was important.

“He needed a game like this to get back on track. He didn’t have a lot of shots, but he was always square to the shooters. He didn’t try and do too much as we told him to keep it simple.”

Beaulieu added, “Brandon has never complained once this year even after he had a couple of tough games and we had to pull him a couple of times.”

This game was scoreless until the 10:37 mark of the second period when Kingston took a 1-0 lead. Two ex-Sting players figured in on the goal as Ryan Kujawinski converted a goalmouth pass from Jack Nevins past Hope.

But the Sting tied the game 70 seconds later when captain Nathan Chiarlitti took a cross-ice pass from Craig Hottot and wristed a shot past Bobkov. It was his fourth goal of the year.

The eventual winning goal came just 25 seconds after that when a creative Brett Thompson notched his 23^rd goal of the season.

Thompson was behind the Kingston goal. He flipped the puck up off the top of the net and into the goal crease. He then skated to the side of the net and tapped the loose puck into the net before Bobkov knew what had happened.

Domenic Alberga was awarded a penalty shot late in the second period, but Bobkov stopped his snap shot.

Sarnia continued to get great scoring chances in the third period. Ludvig Rensfeldt had a breakaway, but was thwarted by the big Kingston netminder.

Hope was forced to make his best stop of the game with just less than five minutes remaining when he stopped Cody Alcock on a partial breakaway.

It wasn’t long after that the Sting had a two-man advantage and cashed in when Alex Basso drilled home a hard slapshot. It was his eighth goal of the year and third in two games.

Charlie Sarault scored his 15^th goal of the season, and first in eight games at 18:13. He beat the defence and then his attempted pass went off Bobkov and into the net.

Sarault added two assists in the game and leads the team in scoring with 66 points.

Beaulieu says the two-game winning streak is nice, but, “We are starting to get this team back on track. There’s some cohesion now, but there’s still a lot of work to do and it starts on Monday.

The Sting will finish off their five-game home stand with a pair of games next week. They host the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds on Thursday night and the Windsor Spitfires Friday night. Both games begin at 7:05 p.m. at the RBC Centre. Sarnia is at Guelph next Sunday.

STING NOTES

-       Bobkov was first star with Basso second star and Chiarlitti third star. Sting defenceman Adrian Robertson was the Dickies hardest working player of the game.

-       Kingston played with four 16-year-olds in their lineup.

-       Sarnia’s penalty killing was outstanding as Kingston was zero-for-seven with the man advantage. The Sting took three straight penalties in the third period. The Sting were one-for-six.

-       Sarnia’s overall record improved to 22-16-1-4 while they are 13-6-1-3 on home ice.

-       Fans can listen to all Sting games live on 1070 CHOK Radio.

Dave Borody is a freelance writer who covers Sting games both home and away and also does features for the Sting Website.