Petes’ turnovers cause concern
Team back in action Saturday to host Hamilton Bulldogs
The shot clock read 43-25 in favour of the Peterborough Petes but the scoreboard indicated a 5-3 Kitchener Rangers victory.
It was a rare Tuesday night home game for the Petes with no OHL games scheduled on their regular Thursday night. That’s by design to put full focus on the CIBC Canada-Russia Series game in Sarnia. The Petes next action is 7:05 p.m. Saturday when they host the Hamilton Bulldogs.
Despite dominating the territorial advantage at times, outshooting Kitchener 23-5 in the second period while being outscored 3-2, the Petes coaching staff wasn’t impressed with a few areas of their team’s play, said associate coach Andrew Verner.
“We had 17 turnovers in the first period and the odd-man rushes were five-to-one in their favour in the first period,” said Verner.
“The shot clock tells you a different story but we looked sluggish It’s a weird day to have a game. These kids, unfortunately, are creatures of habit. They looked sluggish.”
Trailing 1-0, the Petes power play, ranked 19th in the OHL, finally ended a zero-for-26 drought to tie it with 1:11 left in the first period. Erik Cermak deflected Chris Paquette’s point shot past goalie Luke Richardson with Liam Kirk also assisting. It was the Petes first goal with the man-advantage since Oct. 13 against Windsor, a stretch of eight games without a power play tally.
“We changed some things (on the power play) and it worked so we should continue with it,” said Cermak. “We tried to get more pucks on the net and put more players there.”
Cermak had a career night with two goals and an assist.
“I’m happy for the two goals but the win mattered more for me,” he said. “We should have won this game. I think we are the better team but we gave up so many outnumbered rushes it cost us.”
The Petes outshot Kitchener 23-5 in the second period but were outscored 3-2.
“We had glimpses of playing our style,” said Petes’ defenceman Adrien Beraldo. “Then we had times where we got away from our game plan. If we’d just got back to basics like chipping pucks in and chipping pucks out, doing the little things, no turnovers, we would have come out with a better outcome. Their goalie made a couple of crazy saves, one on me I don’t even know how he saved it. If we keep on getting those shots things will happen.”
The power play struck twice for the Petes but also got caught just as two expired giving up odd-man rushes on two second period goals by Kitchener.
“The power play got going which is good,” said Verner,
“but for all intents and purposes they were even because we really gave up two shorties, sort of.”
Chase Campbell’s second goal of the game late in the second period and Greg Meireles’ empty-net goal in the final minute of the third secured Kitchener’s victory snapping a three-game losing skid.
The Petes will now prepare for Hamilton who they have lost both meetings with this season including a 7-1 shellacking at the PMC, their worst defeat of the season.
“They’ve played well against us,” said Verner. “They’re quite structured. We find we play pretty well when teams are actually pressuring us. We find our D make quicker, more simple exits and we have more support than against a team that sits back a bit. It almost gives our D corps too much time and sometimes we overthink plays and don’t make the easy play. We’ll certainly have to make an adjustment there. We’ll have to dig into what Hamilton has been doing the last three or four weeks to see if their personnel or special teams have changed at all.”