Challenges never ending for Wilson
Peterborough coaching staff has been keeping busy forming game plans despite not playing a since March
This has been the most challenging season of Rob Wilson’s coaching career and the puck has yet to drop.
Since the Peterborough Petes’ 2019-20 season was cancelled last spring by the pandemic, Wilson and his assistant coaches, Andrew Verner and Derrick Walser, have been preparing for the 2020-21 season. The start of the season was pushed back to Dec. 1, then to Feb. 4 and then indefinitely.
It was tough enough last spring getting past the disappointment of losing out on a big playoff run his team had been building and working toward for two years.
Wilson got his head around the fact they were losing most of their veterans and would be one of, if not the, youngest teams in the OHL.
“We’ll have a whole year to work with these kids and maybe we’ll surprise everybody,” Wilson said.
“No one will ever think a team this young could make the playoffs but let’s try. That’s what we talked about as coaches. Let’s do something people would think is impossible.
“It was going to be a really good teaching year.”
Then the postponements came. “We start gearing up for November and we hit a blip again. The same thing happens again in December and now again to February. It’s been a real roller-coaster,” Wilson said.
It’s difficult to keep telling the players the goalposts have moved and their training has to be revamped.
“I know how I would have felt missing five, six, 12 months of my OHL career. It would have been very, very hard. I can really feel for these kids,” he said.
“By the same token, you’re dealing with your own disappointment being in limbo. Right now we’d usually be gearing up for playoffs and trying to get as high up in the standings as you can for home-ice advantage or just trying to make the playoffs.
“And it’s not like you can even blame somebody,” he said.
“There’s no one to blame. The league’s hands are tied. The government is trying to do what’s best for everybody. You’re just sitting here hoping and when things are that much out of your hands it’s a pretty hopeless feeling.”
The WHL announced its commitment to a 24-game season, but has no start date or permission from health officials to proceed. The QMJHL hopes to restart a season it paused last month because of rising COVID-19 numbers. The OHL continues to tell its teams it’s committed to some type of season, but no one knows when or what it will look like.
“I’m really hopeful we do have some type of season. That’s the message I’ve been told,” Wilson said. “I really don’t know any more than that. My gut tells me they will want to try to play at some point.”
Wilson believes it’s worth doing something even at this late stage.
“If you said to me right now, ‘Rob, you can only practise for the next two months.’ I’d bite your hand off and take it,” he said.
His staff has been preparing for months and talk daily about how to continue preparing.
Wilson said he’s also trying to improve his knowledge base by watching as much hockey as he can from the recent NHL playoffs, to the world juniors, to games from Europe and upcoming NHL games. He’s dissecting games looking for ideas.
“There was something our coaching staff really picked up on from Tampa Bay watching the playoffs that will add to something we are doing. It’s an extra step they do to something we do very similar,” he said. “I’m going to really focus on that sort of stuff.”