A week ago the Sarnia Sting opened the pre-season scoring late in the game to salvage a tie against the London Knights.

Friday night they had the tables turned by the Windsor Spitfires.
 

Nick Ebert of the Spitfires scored with 6.4 seconds remaining to give Windsor a 5-4 victory over the Sting at the WFCU Centre.
 

The loss evens Sarnia’s pre-season record in the Ontario Hockey League at 1-1-1.
 

The two teams have a return match tonight at the RBC Centre beginning at 7:05 p.m.
 

Ebert banged home a loose puck in front of Sting goalie John Cullen. Sting head coach Dave MacQueen again watched the game from the press box allowing assistants Trevor Letowski and Derek DiMuzio to run the team behind the bench.

MacQueen wasn’t overly thrilled with the performance of his team.
 

“Our guys need to find a certain way to play in this league. We did get better as the game went on, but we had away too many turnovers, especially in our own end, we had too much individual play and too many undisciplined penalties.”

He added, “it was typical exhibition game and was pretty sloppy at times. But we did a lot of standing around and watching Windsor. The winning goal was a good example. We stood around and let the guy come off the point to score.”
 

The Sting never led in the game.
 

Windsor jumped out to a 2-0 lead before the game was nine minutes old on goals by Michael Whaley and Zack Kassian. The Sting got one goal back before the period ended as Nathan Chiarlitti notched his second in as many games with Nickolas Latta and Alex Galchenyuk picking up assists.
 

After Kassian scored his second of the game for Windsor 16 seconds into the second period, the Sting roared back to tie the game as Craig Hottot drilled home a slapshot and Tyler Peters scored his fourth goal of the pre-season on a power play at 14:11.
 

But Windsor took the lead again on a power play when Kassian notched his third of the night.
 

The score stayed that way until midway through the third period when overage defenceman Brent Sullivan tied the game when he rifled home a slapshot from the point.
 

Sarnia did an excellent job of killing off a two-man Windsor power play for a minute and 50 seconds late in the period before the Spitfires scored with 6.4 seconds left.
 

John Cullen went the distance in the goal for the Sting and faced 37 shots. Sarnia fired 30 at Josh Malecki in goal for Windsor. The Spitfires improved to 3-0-1 in pre-season.
 

• The Sting played with just four defencemen, including rookie Ryan Zupancic. Hottot saw regular duty on the blueline. Missing were Joe Rogalski, Daniel Broussard, Kyle Flemington and Ron Soucie.

•  Roglaski has left for the Pittsburgh Penguins training camp, Soucie remains sidelined with a neck injury, Broussard was serving a suspension while Flemington was also on suspension. Flemington’s suspension is far more severe as he will miss the opening four games of the regular season as a result of an incident in the London game.

• Also not dressed were forwards J.C. Campagna, Brett Ritchie and Ben O’Quinn, all out with injuries, and goalie Shayne Campbell.

• Windsor was missing several regulars away at NHL camps. Ex-Sting Mitch Dunning could be out for up to 12 months after suffering a serious knee injury in a pre-season game with Plymouth.

• Ex-Sting Zack MacQueen had one assist. Galchenyuk had two assists for Sarnia.

• The Spitfires, coming off back-to-back Memorial Cup titles, has sold 5,200 season tickets for this season.

• For tonight’s game, all current and former Sting season ticket holders will be admitted free if they pick up their tickets before 6 p.m.