Petes coach Wilson looks past washed-out 2019-20 season
Peterborough had been hoping for a solid playoff run after a strong regular campaign
First in a two-part interview with Peterborough Petes head coach Rob Wilson on the team’s future.
Peterborough Petes head coach Rob Wilson has turned the page on the 2019-20 Ontario Hockey League season and is looking to the future.
It took Wilson a bit of time to digest the disappointment of seeing an anticipated long playoff run cancelled by the COVID-19 pandemic. There was no question the Petes invested a lot into the season with a real belief they were a championship contender.
The club had 15 players aged 19 or 20 and only three are eligible to return as overagers.
There is also the possibility their top scorer, Nick Robertson, could crack the Toronto Maple Leafs roster next season.
It will be a much different looking team, much younger, next season.
When Wilson, who has one year left on a three-year contract, was hired he made no secret of his ambition to one day coach in the NHL. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think Wilson might want to make a move now rather than move into a rebuilding situation with the Petes.
“I think COVID-19 has thrown a monkey wrench into anybody’s plans,” Wilson said.
“Nobody really knows what is going on. What I’ve been doing is just preparing like I normally would for the upcoming season, whether that is with (GM) Mike (Oke), the coaches or the board. With COVID happening, we haven’t had any discussions about long-term futures or short-term futures,” he added.
“I’m sure we will in the upcoming weeks start discussing some things, but the goalposts have changed for a while and I think everyone understands that. I’m just going about business as usual.”
Wilson will have a much younger roster but he’s not prepared to concede next season already.
“We were building something over the last two years and we felt getting a piece here and moving a piece there slowly added up to having a team that could go deep without losing sight on today,” Wilson said.
“I fully intended on going deep last year (2018-19) whether people thought it was realistic or not,” he said. “That’s just the way I think. People are going to look at our age as of today and think this is a team that is going to be in a situation where they’re going to be one of the youngest teams in the league and the conference and maybe the expectations won’t be the same. I have to be honest, that is not my mindset.
“I’m hoping a few players will come back and surprise everybody and I can start saying to other people in the organization, ‘You know what? I like this team and I think we have this,’ ” he added. “Right now, yes, expectations wouldn’t be the same, but I don’t want to say it’s OK if we finish ninth because we’re the youngest team in the league. I don’t like getting into those conversations. I think expectations should be high every year.”
Having said that, Wilson understands he’ll have to coach the team differently because it won’t have the same experience or type of players. “You have to coach what you have. Maybe you play a different style. Maybe you can’t score as many goals so maybe you have to play more defensively or maybe you can’t play as physical because you don’t have the right penalty killers or whatever the situation might be. Maybe your power play isn’t going to be near the top.
“The way we built the team and one of the things we wanted to do over the last two years was to really work on our special teams and improve them. I think the coaching staff did a great job in that area. We were second in penalty killing and fourth on the power play. That usually means you’re going to have a successful playoff because special teams are so critical. Pieces were brought in for those certain specialties. Now we’re going to have to figure out how we can still do that,” Wilson said. “If you want to have teams in the top six, seven or eight of penalty kill and power play you need the right players for those spots. There is a lot more to be done this year to have success than there might be if we’d had an older team, for sure, but I certainly don’t want to sit here and talk about how we’re going to be real young so ninth place is OK. No, it’s not.”
Wilson and his staff have shifted into off-season mode. They’ve conducted video conferences with players to advise them on off-season training. “Besides four teams, everybody would be done playing so now we’re in that time where everybody is starting to prepare for next season,” he said.