Minor midget Petes hope to use tourney lessons
Peterborough Foley Bus Lines minor midget AAA Petes head coach Scott Donato tried to look at the positives of an early exit from the 12th annual Midget Tournament of Champions.
For just the second time in five tournaments this season the Petes failed to make the playoff round following a 5-4 loss to the Burlington Eagles Saturday afternoon at the Evinrude Centre. Combined with a 5-3 win over the Thunder Bay Kings in the morning, the Petes finished with a 2-1-1 record. The 3-0-1 Eagles won their pool to advance to Sunday’s semifinals.
The Ottawa Capitals stole the show on Sunday sweeping both the minor midget and major midget titles. At minor midget they beat the Eagles 3-2 in the final. At major midget Ottawa blanked the Whitby Wildcats 1-0, both at the Evinrude Centre.
The minor midget Petes need just one point in their final four regular season games to clinch first place in the OMHA’s ETA East Division and they’re ranked No. 10 in the OHL Cup Showcase Power Rankings. But they played from behind almost all tournament rallying from a 4-1 third period deficit against Burlington to tie the game 4-4 with three minutes left. The Petes needed a win to advance, a tie wouldn’t have done it, so they pulled their goalie in the final minute and the Eagles won on an empty-net goal with one second remaining. It took three third period goals to finish off Thunder Bay.
“Obviously, it’s not the result the team wanted,” said Donato, “but we’re going to use it to get ready for the playoffs. In tournaments like this you play in different situations. We haven’t played down like this a lot this season. Even though we didn’t play our greatest we proved we can come back from a three-goal deficit in the third period so we’re not out of games. We don’t want to be playing like that but in the playoffs different things show up. We gained some experience that way but we have some things to tidy up for the playoffs which start in two weeks.”
Against Thunder Bay, Will Everson scored a pair of goals while Luc Reeve had a goal and two assists. Ben Lukinuk and Austin Pearce also scored. Tyler Deline had two assists with singles to Brett Robertson and Nolan Burke.
Pearce scored twice against Burlington while Deline and Burke also scored. Robertson had two assists with singles to Avery Cook, Kalvyn Watson and Lukinuk.
“We came close last year in our bantam year when we lost in the finals,” said Donato. “We’ve had a pretty successful run at tournaments this season. Unfortunately, this weekend it wasn’t meant to be. The worst thing we can do is dwell on it. Our goal is to make the OHL Cup. We like our team being focused on the micro-moments so we’ll get ready for Tuesday’s game and prepare ourselves to rock and roll in the playoffs.”
The host Peterborough Minor Hockey Council’s other entry, the Boston Pizza major midget Petes, also failed to advance. Their 4-2 loss to the Niagara North Stars on Saturday morning left them with a 1-3 record.