Petes are keeping positive
Petes outshoot defending Memorial Cup champs but lose their ninth in 10 games
It’s tough to stay positive when you’ve lost nine of your last 10 games but Peterborough Petes assistant coach Andrew Verner sees a ray of light.
The Petes outshot the Windsor Spitfires 33-26 in a 2-1 loss where all-star goalie Michael DiPietro was the first star before 3,454 fans at the Memorial Centre on Thursday night.
It was the Petes’ third straight loss and fourth in five games since the Christmas break. Still, Verner believes his team is almost ready to snap out of their slump.
“Having been in the middle of long winning and long losing streaks,”Verner said, “when you’re still in your losing streak you start to play better towards the end of that streak or group of games where you’re not successful. If you can take any solace it’s that the guys feel they’re playing better. They’re just not getting the results they want.”
It adds to the frustration level when you feel like you deserve to win and don’t, said Chris Paquette, one of a number of Petes struggling to find the net.
“We try to play a little too fancy sometimes,” Paquette said. “Sometimes you just have to put it on net and maybe get a rebound. Sometimes if you crash the net the juicy rebounds are right there. Those are the things we should have done.”
Austin Osmanski admits it’s hard to explain how a team that has scored in the past can struggle so much.
“I wish I could tell you. I think that’s the problem. We can’t really figure it out,” said Osmanski. “It’s a matter of bearing down and executing.”
“We were better than we’ve been recently but not good enough.”
The Spitfires are defending Memorial Cup champions but came in missing Logan Brown to the world juniors and having dealt Aaron Luchuk, Gabriel Vilardi and Sean Day as they move into rebuild mode. DiPietro remains their biggest impact player and after not playing particularly well against the Petes in a November loss in Windsor he was the star of the rematch.
“He did play a good game today and made a couple of amazing saves,” Paquette said.
Windsor scored the lone goal of the first period when Curtis Douglas stripped Gleb Babintsev of the puck for a two-on-zero break and put it between goalie Dylan Wells’s legs at 12:50.
It was one of the few mistakes the Petes made. Verner said most of the goals against lately have been odd-man rushes and neutral zone errors and not the defence’s fault.
“Our D -zone has been quite good since the Christmas break and has cleaned up nicely,” Verner said.
DiPietro robbed Pavel Gogolev with a pad stop on a one-timer off Jonathan Ang’s cross-ice pass in the first.
The Petes outshot Windsor 17-9 in the second period but still trailed after 40 minutes as each team scored once.
The Petes tied it 12:52 into the second when Ang won a draw to Adrien Beraldo who slid a pass across to Cole Fraser who blew a point shot through traffic.
“I don’t think we shoot enough,” Verner said. “If you think there is a good goalie in there sometimes you get spooked and think you have to make three backdoor passes before you can put it in an empty net. Case in point is Cole Fraser’s goal. One pass, a shot and a screened goal from the blue-line. Good goalie, bad goalie, average goalie, in this league they’re still junior goalies and, obviously, there are holes. That’s why they’re in junior. You have to take your cracks.”
Windsor hadn’t threatened in a while when Jake Smith hammered the winner on a long shot off the wing over Wells’s glove with 4:03 left in the second.
John Druce is back behind an OJHL bench.
The Wellington Dukes named Druce as their head coach on Thursday after a major shakeup despite being in first place in the North-East Conference by 13 points. Dukes’ associate coach and GM Ryan Woodward resigned on Thursday morning and the rest of the coaching staff including head coach Scott McCrory were relieved of their duties.
Druce ran his first practice Thursday afternoon and has asked Peterborough minor hockey coach Mike Farrugia, who runs a skills development business, to join him as an assistant coach as well as Dukes’ alumnus Derek Smith.
“I was truly surprised to be quite honest,” said Druce. “I didn’t quite understand what was going on but, obviously, they felt there was a need to make a change. In speaking with their owner and player personnel director they really wanted me to come in and I felt very fortunate that they thought of me.”
Druce was surprisingly let go by the Cobourg Cougars earlier this season after leading them to the RBC Cup national junior A championship last season. New management in Cobourg decided they wanted to bring in Jerome Dupont as coach.
Druce, a Peterborough native, played three seasons with the Petes and 11 seasons in the NHL playing 531 games with the Washington Capitals, Winnipeg Jets, Los Angeles Kings and Philadelphia Flyers.
He will make his debut Friday when Wellington hosts the Trenton Golden Hawks.
Druce said he’s not going to try to re-invent the wheel in Wellington.
“They have a squad with some good depth and good talent and being in first place in the conference is a huge bonus,” he said. “Coming down the stretch and into the playoffs you have to make sure things are firing on all cylinders. It’s great we’re in that position but we have to make sure we tweak and we’re ready to play.
“I don’t think I need to change a whole lot. They ’ve had success and know what type of team they have. We just have to clarify our identity and understand what we’re all about as a team.”
The Dukes 22-9-1-3 have lost four games in a row. They are 13 points ahead of second-place Kingston Voyageurs.
“There was a real disconnect on the bench and we felt it best to get a clean slate and move in a different direction,” Dukes director of player personnel Randy Uens told the Belleville Intelligencer. “John is a really solid hockey man – heck he coached Cobourg to a national championship last year - and I think we are really fortunate that someone of his calibre was available to us.”