Special teams letting Spitfires down
Team takes three-game losing skid into Friday’s home game against Frontenacs
Special teams made the rebuilding Windsor Spitfires a special team early in the season.
At one point, the Spitfires had both the top power-play and penalty-killing units in the Ontario Hockey League and earned honourable mention in the Canadian Hockey League just outside the top 10 rankings.
However, over the past six games heading into Friday’s game against the Kingston Frontenacs at the WFCU Centre, there’s been little to celebrate with the club’s special teams.
“It was kind of the recipe for success early, our special teams, and right now it’s kind of going the other way,” Spitfires head coach Trevor Letowski said. “So it’s really hard, especially against good teams, to have success if you lose that battle.”
Windsor has a three-game losing streak heading into Friday’s game, which is the team’s longest streak of the season. Overall, the club has lost five of its last six games.
Over that six-game stretch, the Spitfires have just two goals in 21 power-play chances (9.5 per cent success rate) while the penalty kill has allowed nine power-play goals on 22 chances (59.1 per cent kill efficiency) over that stretch.
“I think it’s just the ebbs and flows of the season,” said Spitfires captain Aaron Luchuk, who plays on both units. “We were up high a few weeks ago and our (power play) and (penalty kill) were clicking on all cylinders and now we’re having a bit of a bump in the road and our job is to figure it out and change it.”
In games the Spitfires have won the special-teams battle by scoring more on the power play than allowing while short-handed, the club is 8-2-1-0 (.773 winning percentage). When the club is even in that state, it’s 2-1-0-0 (.667 winning percentage), but when the club has lost the battle the team is just 2-7-0-0 (.222 winning percentage).
“It’s amazing how much it does matter,” Letowski said. “If you look at the beginning of the season, it is the difference maker and it probably is the other way at this point now.”
It’s why Letowski opted to focus on the two during practice on Wednesday and Thursday.
“To me, it’s been our penalty kill that’s been struggling,” Letowski said. “The power play as well, but we’re getting some pretty good looks.
“The penalty kill, we’ve been giving stuff up and it’s not necessarily structure, but just fundamentals. Missed clears, not winning faceoffs or missing pucks. It’s not anything to panic about, yet.”
Overall, the club’s power play has slipped to third in the league at 25 per cent while the penalty kill has dropped to 13th in the league at 80 per cent.
Still, both units were successful early, and defenceman Sean Day sees no reason why the club can’t get back on track.
“I just think we need to be more simple and play within our structure,” Day said. “On the power play, we’re trying to go outside and be more free flowing and stuff like that and I don’t think we can be doing that, especially when in trouble.
“Penalty kill, we just have to look at what we did last year and have a little bit more pride in blocking shots and playing within the structure. At least in the last three games, you can see we were playing outside our structure and when we do that we can’t win.”