Pats pacing penalty parade

The Regina Pats lead the WHL in penalty minutes, with 914. Surprised?

“A little bit,” Pats captain Sam Steel replied Monday.

“I think we went through a phase there before the trade deadline where we were fighting a ton. We play the game hard and sometimes I guess we cross the line. We don’t want to be in the penalty box. That’s not a good stat to have, but we play the game hard.”

The key is to be aggressive while exercising good judgment.

“I think you can be a little bit of both,” Steel said. “You definitely want to play on the edge. Penalties are going to happen. It’s just a part of the game. You want to limit some types of penalties. It’s a mix of finding that edge but still being disciplined.”

Regina is averaging 14.3 penalty minutes per game. The Seattle Thunderbirds are next at 14.1.

The Pats also lead the league in times shorthanded (281). They are one ahead of the Victoria Royals, who have played one fewer game than Regina.

The raw penalty-minute total isn’t a big deal to Pats head coach and general manager John Paddock.

“You can’t go by that at all, because 10-minute misconducts and stuff play into it,” he said. “I’m not happy that we are close to the top or at the top with time short-handed, but there’s other good teams, like Victoria and Kelowna, that are in that situation so I don’t have an explanation for that.”

Paddock observed that the Pats were “a passive team” for the first half of the season, before making a series of moves leading up to the Jan. 10 trade deadline.