Most players in the Ontario Hockey League eat a big meal a few hours before a game, specifically chicken and pasta.

Sarnia Sting goalie Troy Passingham tried something a little different before Sunday afternoon’s game against the Peterborough Petes.

“I just wasn’t hungry so I didn’t eat anything at all.”

It not only worked, but almost to perfection.

Passingham turned aside 38 of 39 shots he faced in a solid performance in leading the Sting to a 4-1 victory before 2,810 fans at the RBC Centre.

Most important is the fact the win snapped a four-game losing streak for the Sting. Unfortunately Sarnia failed to gain any ground on eighth place Guelph as the Storm scored two goals in the last 18 seconds of the third period to defeat Ottawa.

Guelph has a five-point lead over the Sting for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference with Sarnia holding a game in hand.

Passingham made a number of quality saves throughout the game.

“I thought Troy was outstanding today,” said Sting head coach Dave MacQueen. “He made a number of big saves in the first period to keep us in the game and certainly gave us a chance to win.”

Since coming over from Windsor in a trade, Passingham has played in six games and Sarnia has eight out of a possible 12 points.

Passingham, who was the game’s first star, downplayed his effort.

“In the first period I needed to make a couple of quality saves and the team took it from there. For us it was a big game after that loss to Erie. It was a team effort and our penalty-killing was really good today.”

After getting four power plays in the opening period, Sarnia took seven straight penalties the rest of the game.

The only Peterborough goal came at 12:45 of the third period when Lino Martschini spoiled Passingham’s shutout bid knocking in a rebound. Sarnia was two-men short at the time.

“Our penalty-killing was very good even though our power play in the first period was atrocious,” said MacQueen. “We blocked a lot of shots while Passingham was our best penalty-killer. Our power play tried to be too fancy.”

As for the game overall, MacQueen said, “it certainly wasn’t pretty. We let them hang around far too long before we caught some bounces in the third period. You can tell we are a fragile team right now. We did what we had to do and right now for us, that’s huge.”

Sarnia got off to a quick star as just two minutes into the game Garrett Hooey scored his fifth goal of the season when he deflected home a cross-ice pass from Nail Yakupov.

The score remained that way until the 9:38 mark of period two when Brandon Francisco notched his 10th of the year when he tipped home a perfect pass from Alex Galchenyuk.

The Sting broke the game open with a pair of goals early in the third period.

Captain Nathan Chiarlitti scored his fifth of the year at 5:23 of a wrister from the slot while Craig Hottot recorded his 10th goal of the year on a shorthanded breakaway. Hottot made a great deke from close range before slipping the puck past the goalie.

“I have a pretty set move and I’ve been using it for awhile and it’s been working,” said Hottot, who played a solid, two-way game. “Hopefully I can keep it going.”

He added, “We played all right although we could have played better. Our penalty-killing was a big positive and helped us win. We also got some key goals that gave us some momentum.”

Peterborough held a 39-23 edge in shots on goal. Sarnia was zero-for-six on the power play and Peterborough one-for-eight.

When told about Guelph’s comeback win against Ottawa, MacQueen said, “we can control only what we can control. We told our guys that right from the start. We play teams ahead of us down the stretch. We play Guelph twice, London twice, Erie twice and Plymouth twice. So we have enough head-to-head games that makes those games that much more crucial.”

As for snapping a four-game slide, MacQueen added, “We’ve got to get points. You look at the schedule and see Peterborough. But they went into Kitchener two weeks ago and won. They also had a day off just like we did. We had to respond and at times we did while at other times we were back on our heels. There hasn’t been a lot of confidence lately so hopefully this will help.”

Sarnia has a tough week ahead. On Thursday they host the first place Saginaw Spirit at 7:05 p.m. at the RBC Centre. Friday night Sarnia plays in Guelph. The game will be shown on CTV Sportsnet while Sunday afternoon Sarnia travels to Mississauga to battle the Eastern Conference leaders, St. Michael’s Majors.

STING NOTES

-    Passingham was first star while Hooey was second star and Hottot third star.

-    Galchenyuk had a pair of assists while Kale Kerbashian had one assist. That makes nine straight games Kerbashian has at least one assist in a game.

-    Brett Ritchie and Anthony Donati were both out of the lineup with injuries while Josh Chapman was again up from the Sarnia Legionnaires.

-    Sarnia is now 18-20-4-2 overall. Sarnia won only 17 games all of last season. Their home record improved to 12-10-1-2.