PATS DOWN BUT NOT OUT
Season is far from over
The Regina Pats can take solace in at least one aspect of the first half of their season.
It’s over.
When the players dispersed Monday for an eight-day Christmas hiatus, they were granted a reprieve from the pressure and expectations that come with being the host team for the 2018 Memorial Cup.
In addition to a fresh start, the mid-season break presents an opportunity to step back and take a long hard look at what went wrong in the first 36 games.
At 16-17-3-0, the Pats’ record provides no shortage of food for thought.
“For sure it’s disappointing,” said head coach and general manager John Paddock, whose team went 4-9-1 over the past month and entered the break riding a season-high four-game losing streak.
“It’s magnified because (the worst part) has come at the end. But the sky isn’t falling like everybody thinks it is. We’ll regroup.”
Regina is still burdened by comparisons to the recordsetting team that won the WHL’s regular-season title last spring (52-12-7-1) and advanced to the league final for the first time since 1984.
That squad included several key players who graduated at season’s end: Dawson Leedahl, Connor Hobbs, Adam Brooks, Sergey Zborovskiy, Chase Harrison, Filip Ahl and Austin Wagner.
They represented seven of the club’s top 10 scorers.
“This isn’t the team that it was last year,” Paddock said. “That’s what everybody on the outside gravitates to and that’s fine.”
Despite a massive exodus of talent, expectations actually grew after the Pats won a bid for the Memorial Cup tournament.
Like it or not, that’s part of the package. It also becomes a source of mounting pressure when the team struggles to live up to expectations.
“I’m tired of talking about the Memorial Cup cloud because that’s only a small part of it,” said Paddock, who believes his team is more talented than its record indicates “to some extent.”
“I’m not going to dissect or criticize our team right now,” he continued. “I’m disappointed in how we’ve played at times and how some individuals have played. But I’m not necessarily talking about talent when I say that.”
It doesn’t take talent to stay out of the penalty box, but it does require commitment and discipline.
The Pats are among the mostpenalized teams in the WHL and also have one of the league’s worst penalty-killing units. That’s a lethal combination, but it should be fixable.
Penalty killing, after all, is mostly about effort and execution.
Regardless of talent, there’s nothing to prevent the Pats from matching or surpassing their opponents’ work ethic on a consistent basis.
That hasn’t happened, which makes Paddock’s job even tougher leading up to the Jan. 10 trade deadline. Not only is he trying to infuse more high-end talent, he’s also looking to add some intangibles that have been lacking.
It’s obvious the Pats don’t have the speed and skill to overwhelm opponents like they did last season. They’ve also proven to be too soft and lacking certain hard-to-measure qualities that help you grind it out against elite teams.
That’s why the hard-nosed leadership of Leedahl, the blazing speed of Wagner and the physicality of Hobbs have been missed as much as the pure skill of Brooks.
Paddock will no doubt be looking for all of the above as the trade deadline approaches. That’s quite a shopping list, especially considering the depleted assets at his disposal.
It also doesn’t bode well for the organization’s objective of remaining competitive beyond this season, but it’s a price they have to pay.
In being awarded the 2018
CHL championship — the 100th edition, no less — the Pats were bestowed a tremendous honour but also a huge responsibility.
It’s fair game to criticize the team for not fulfilling its end of the bargain to date, but there is time to turn things around.
If the Pats are still treading water in February, go ahead and panic. But it says here that Paddock will be true to his word and assemble a championshipcalibre squad well-equipped to calm a restless fan base.
In the meantime, patience is a virtue.
“This isn’t completely foreign country (for a host team),” Paddock said, “but it is foreign country to us. I’m disappointed. I never thought we would only have this many points but I also didn’t think we would be nipping at Moose Jaw’s heels. Somewhere in between is where I expected us to be.”
The Pats entered the break a whopping 21 points behind the front-running Moose Jaw Warriors. They’re also 17 points behind the second-place Swift Current Broncos and 14 back of the No. 3 Brandon Wheat Kings.
In the era of the loser point for overtime and shootout losses, it’s extremely difficult to close a significant gap in the standings. It’ll take both a massive surge by the Pats and a monumental collapse by their opponents to make it a four-team race.
The odds aren’t in their favour, but that might not be a bad thing.
As it stands, the Pats occupy the top wild card playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. Maintaining that position would allow them to go through the weaker Central Division in the first two playoff rounds instead of having to navigate the East Division gauntlet.
Even if the Pats somehow made it out of their division, how much gas would they have left in the tank for the next two rounds?
Hypothetically speaking, Regina is better off taking the path of least resistance with a new-look lineup that (health permitting) should hit its stride in the spring.
There are no guarantees it’ll play out that way, but the stars are clearly aligning.
Either way, it’s too soon to write off the Pats, who have some excellent high-end talent (Sam Steel, Josh Mahura and Matt Bradley) plus a steady hand at the helm in Paddock, who leads one of the WHL’s better coaching staffs.
They also have the support of a fantastic ownership group, which shouldn’t be dismissed considering the longer-term sacrifices that must be made at the trade deadline.
Every member of Regina’s hockey operations staff has its fingerprints on the team’s record, but they also have the means to fix it.
The same goes for the players. Those who accept their share of responsibility and come back ready to embrace the challenge will have a much better chance of being around beyond Jan.
10. With that comes a realistic chance of turning their first-half letdown into a distant memory.
It’s magnified because (the worst part) has come at the end. But the sky isn’t falling like everybody thinks it is.
We’ll regroup.