Pats hit 40-win mark as ‘real season begins’
The Regina Pats didn’t go out of their way to celebrate hitting the big four-oh.
It was more of a low-key recognition that the WHL club had achieved a noteworthy milestone on Friday night, as the Pats earned their 40th win of the campaign with a 3-2 overtime win over the Swift Current Broncos.
“I don’t think we were really thinking much about it,” said Pats head coach/GM John Paddock, whose team will face Swift Current in the first round of the playoffs.
“It was important to improve our team and get playing better. (Forty wins) does say that we’ve had a really good stretch in the last little bit. It’s nice, but at the end of it, we really only have one goal and that’s to be playing regularly for quite a while.”
As the host team for the Memorial Cup, the Pats are already guaranteed to be among the CHL’s final four in May. They didn’t appear worthy in the first half, entering the mid-season break with a 16-173-0 record.
However, they turned it around after Christmas to go 24-8-3-1 the rest of the way, compiling a .722 winning percentage that was second only to the Everett Silvertips (26-7-1-2, .764).
The Pats started to gain momentum right around the time that Paddock began the process of adding nine new players prior to the WHL trade deadline. Regina would go on to post the league’s second-best record after Jan. 10 (19-6-2-1, .732) — once again finishing behind Everett (22-4-1-2, .810) but ahead of the Broncos (197-2-2, .700) and Moose Jaw Warriors (18-9-1-1, .655).
Moose Jaw (52-15-2-3), Swift Current (48-17-5-2) and Everett (47-20-2-3) finished one-twothree in the league’s final standings. Regina was seventh (40-256-1).
“We didn’t think or hope we were going to struggle like we did in the first half, but that’s just what we were,” said Paddock.
“Did we make more changes than I thought we would have to make? Maybe. Not getting (Austin) Wagner back (from the AHL) necessitated another change that we weren’t really counting on. But none of what happened during the course of the season was a surprise to me or to us (as a staff ). Maybe (the team struggled) to a slightly higher degree than we thought. Maybe it was a little bit bigger hole than we thought.”
Fortunately, they were able to dig out of it.
In the process, the Pats reached a coveted 40-win plateau that at one time seemed unreachable. They would have been the eighth Memorial Cup host team to not hit 40 wins since the current format was introduced in 1983.
Looking back, this season has been remarkably similar to the 2000-01 campaign when Regina last hosted the Memorial Cup. The Pats were a game under .500 before the trade deadline that year but went 20-6-2 the rest of the way, finishing 40-27-2.
Their momentum came to an abrupt halt at the hands of the Calgary Hitmen, who eliminated Regina in the first round of the playoffs. The team was idle for six-plus weeks before mounting a strong comeback in the Memorial Cup, eventually losing the semifinal in overtime.
The Pats hope to fare better in this year’s playoffs, despite another daunting first-round opponent.
At the very least, they have established themselves as a credible threat.
“It was important,” said Paddock. “We’ve done that against two of the top teams in the country (Moose Jaw and Swift Current). We had some good games against them. It showed we’re worthy of stepping on the ice (with them).
“Now the real season begins.”