London Knights ground Spitfires
With key players sidelined, special teams nosedive continues in loss to Knights
KNIGHTS 3, SPITFIRES 1
If the Windsor Spitfires are going to have any success down the stretch in the OHL regular season, the club’s special teams play has to be a lot more special.
The club failed to connect on five power-play chances and gave up one goal on just two penalty kill situations in a 3-1 loss to the London Knights on Monday before 9,036 at Budweiser Gardens.
“I think our power play cost us today,” Spitfires head coach Trevor Letowski said. “We’re going to play a lot of tight games like this, so a lot of times it’s going to come down to where we’re going to need one (on the power play).”
For the most part, it was a solid game for the Spitfires, who outshot the Knights and created more power-play chances than the club allowed.
“I think we played a really good game, it just didn’t work in our favour,” Spitfires alternate captain Luke Boka said.
“Obviously we had a lot of power plays that we probably should have capitalized on a few of them.”
At the trade deadline, the Spitfires had the league’s sixthbest power play at 23.5 per cent. Since then, the club has scored just five goals in 54 chances with the man advantage (9.2 per cent) and dropped to 12th overall in the league.
“At the start of the year, we had a lot of guys from last year on the power play, so they were all on the same page,” Spitfires alternate captain Cole Purboo said.
“We’re starting to learn and we’re starting to appreciate the fact that our power play needs to be good and our penalty kill needs to be even better,” Boka said. “It’s just a work in progress and we’re going to keep working on it.”
It doesn’t help that leading scorer Jane Smith is suspended and rookie defenceman Nathan Staios is sidelined by a knee injury.
“That hurts having Nate out because the way our team’s built, there’s not really a guy that’s just a power-play guy,” said Letowski, who has juggled several combinations. “We’re having trouble finding the right personnel. We’re trying to change things around.
“It’s tough, right? We’re just giving some guys different looks, but something we definitely have to continue to work on.”
Windsor struggled at the start of Monday’s game. London’s Alex Formenton got around his check and beat goalie Mikey DiPietro on the first shot of the game just 46 seconds in.
A few key saves by DiPietro allowed his young teammates to slowly pull back into the game, but the Knights got a power-play goal from Evan Bouchard in the first two minutes of the second period to go up 2-0.
“I thought we played a pretty good game,” Purboo said. “We played them hard. We had a lot of chances to score, but we just weren’t getting the bounces.”
Boka got Windsor to within a goal after 40 minutes, but the Spitfires could not produce the equalizer despite three powerplay chances in the third period.
With a late power play and DiPietro on the bench for an extra attacker, Liam Foudy found the empty Windsor next in the final minute to seal the win for the Knights.
“We have to just keep experimenting and then trying to find the right fit,” Letowski said. “We have time still and we’ll continue to work on it.”