Wins were two different types: Petes’ coach
Rare weekend off for OHL club followed OT, road victories
They were two very different types of wins but that’s OK by Peterborough Petes’ head coach Rob Wilson.
The Petes had a rare weekend off after an inspired 3-2 overtime home win against the Oshawa Generals on Thursday and a grinding 4-3 road win over the Kingston Frontenacs on Friday.
The scheduling oddity is partially related to a rare Tuesday home game for the Petes when they host the Kitchener Rangers 7:05 p.m. at the Memorial Centre. The OHL schedule is dark on the Petes’ usual Thursday home night to put focus on the CIBC Canada-Russia Series game in Sarnia involving an OHL all-star squad against Russia’s National Junior Team.
The Petes outshot Oshawa 51-21 but were pushed to overtime by the stellar goaltending of Generals’ Kyle Keyser. Pavel Gogolev netted the winner 38 seconds into overtime.
The next night the Petes, who sit third in the OHL’s Eastern Conference at 11-7-0, took on the last place Frontenacs. Wilson warned his club not to take Kingston lightly as their work ethic under first-year head coach and ex-Pete Kurtis Foster is to be respected.
Chris Paquette’s second goal of the game with 1:45 left into an empty-net looked like an insurance marker putting the Petes up 4-2, Kingston had other ideas scoring 24 seconds later and Petes’ netminder Hunter Jones had to make some late saves to preserve the win. It was the Petes third win in four games and snapped a four-game road losing streak.
It wasn’t as pretty as Thursday but Wilson was satisfied the job got done.
“We played so well (Thursday) it’s very easy to get into a lull the next night,” he said. “I told them before this game this is a very hard working team. I watched them play Sudbury last week and they beat them quite handily. Maybe Sudbury didn’t take it with the right approach, I don’t know, but we did. It was a scrappy game. A hard fought game and we grinded it out.”
Wilson said it was valuable experience to see that an insurance gaol wasn’t the end of the game.
“They kept coming and don’t stop,” said Wilson. “They have some high-end players you have to be aware of. I have to give our guys credit. These are wins you need. They kept their nose to the grindstone and got the job done.
In a week’s time no one cares how ugly it is or how pretty it is, they just care that you got the two points in the bank.”
The Petes evened their season series against Oshawa at 2-2 with one of their strongest efforts of the season.
Declan Chisholm assisted on all three goals and added two more helpers against Kingston for a team leading 17 points in 18 games. He said they were determined to make up for a poor showing the last time they hosted Oshawa.
“We really wanted this one,” said Chisholm. “Our last segment of games we were one-for-six. We wanted to start this one off well against our rivals.”
Wilson demanded a better showing.
“I was very unhappy with our last game here against Oshawa,” said Wilson. “I didn’t think we played to the level we could have. Our two games in Oshawa were very good but our home game was disappointing and we didn’t have any jump. (Thursday), we wanted that jump. I give the guys a ton of credit. We went at them from the first whistle to the end.
“It was a big game to show ourselves, I’m not too worried about anybody else, but to show ourselves what we can do.”
Newcomer Max Grondin was introduced to the Petes-Generals rivalry. A night later he scored his first goal as a Pete in Kingston.
“You could see the rivalry and the boys were battling hard,” said Grondin.
“(Oshawa) got a big goal at the end but we kept grinding and got them in overtime.”