Petes fall flat on the road
Short-staffed Peterborough Petes suffer another blowout on the road, this time a 7-1 shelling by the Fronts.
KINGSTON – This one was over almost before it began.
The Kingston Frontenacs blew the doors off the short-staffed Peterborough Petes 7-1 before 4,391 fans at the Rogers K-Rock Centre on Friday night. It was 5-0 after 20 minutes with Petes’ starting goalie Dylan Wells chased 7:51 into the game after surrendering three goals on eight shots. The Petes have given up 16 goals in their last two games.
The Frontenacs, who got goals from seven different players, picked up their fifth consecutive win to pull into a tie with the Petes atop the OHL’s Eastern Conference. The Frontenacs, who hold two games in hand, have points in six straight games coming off a seven-game losing streak.
Missing five veteran players, four to injury and one to suspension, the Petes were outshot 19-4 in the first period and were never in the game.
Petes coach Jody Hull said it’s unlikely any of Logan DeNoble, Zach Gallant or Adam Timleck will be ready to return from injury when the two teams meet again Sunday afternoon at the Memorial Centre. Cole Fraser served his first of a five-game suspension while Nick Isaacson is expected to be out for several weeks with an upper body injury.
“We were flat off the start and made some individual blunders and they resulted in pucks in the back of our net,” Hull said. “We’re a fragile group right now. They came at us pretty hard. “It’s all about details and habits and we’ve talked to our guys about it for the last three days. Some of the same mistakes happened in the last game that resulted in goals. Players tried to do the same things today and they resulted in goals. That’s what is frustrating.”
With no reinforcements on the immediate horizon, Hull says it’s up to the 19 healthy players, nine of them 17 or younger, to find it within themselves to get things back on track. The poor play is shared equally by all, Hull said.
“This is a glorious opportunity for a lot of guys to prove to us as coaches, and themselves as players, that they can get the job done in this league and you can play in situations you don’t normally play in and have some success but they’re not giving themselves the opportunity for those things to happen. You just have to keep battling and keep pressing forward.”
With Petes scoring and penalty minute leader Jonathan Ang in the penalty box for tripping Kingston went up 3:40 into the game when Campbellford native Nathan Dunkley tipped Eemeli Rasanen’s point shot past Wells. A Petes giveaway 1:10 later led to a tic-tac-toe passing play finished by Kingston scoring leader Jason Robertson who was alone at the far side of the net.
Tyler Burnie rubbed Robertson’s younger brother Nick off the puck and backhanded a shot by Wells 3:01 later ending the goaltender’s night. Wells had played a night earlier for Team OHL in Owen Sound in the CIBC Canada-Russia Series.
Another Petes giveaway led to Brett Neumann putting a shot between Hunter Jones’s legs and Paul Larabie pushed it over the goal line for his first OHL goal. With 25 seconds left in the first Ryan Cranford put a shot through a Petes’ defenceman which found mesh.
Linus Nyman made it 6-0 at 13:08 of the second period on the third or fourth rebound. Sergey Popov made it 7-0 with 2:56 left in the middle stanza snapping a wrist shot into the top corner.
The Petes finally showed some life in the third period with more physical play and Adrien Beraldo broke Jeremy Helvig’s shutout bid with
his second OHL goal. Semyon DerArguchintsev won the puck in the corner and Beraldo snuck in off the point to put his pass in along the ice.