Pats’ season wasn’t ruined

Regina Pats fans have learned to beware the slides of March.

At this time of year, it has not been uncommon for the local Western Hockey League team to melt in conjunction with the snow — with the result being some meaningless games as the regular season draws to a merciful conclusion.

But after missing the postseason four times in a fiveyear span, the Pats have delivered back-to-back spring surprises.

For the second successive season, the Pats will enjoy home-ice advantage in the opening round of the playoffs. This does require some getting used to.

The Pats, remember, missed the post-season in each of Jordan Eberle’s final two WHL seasons (2008-09 and 2009-10). Such outcomes, and the resulting slapping of foreheads, had conditioned long-suffering junior hockey fans in the greater Regina area to expect very little.

Hence the aforementioned surprises.

Improbably, the 2013-14 Pats captured the East Division’s regular-season title — only to be embarrassed at home in the first two games of the playoffs by the Brandon Wheat Kings, who engineered an opening-round sweep.

There were sweeping changes in the off-season. For starters, Calgary-based Russ Parker sold the franchise to an Anthony Marquart-led Regina quintet.

One of the new regime’s first major moves was to dismiss head coach Malcolm Cameron — perhaps for contravening team policy by engineering a first-place finish.

John Paddock was eventually hired as Cameron’s replacement, with the added responsibility of overseeing the Pats’ hockey operations.

Under Paddock, the Pats were among the WHL’s top handful of teams over the first half of the season. Suddenly, they were recording road victories over powerhouses such as the Wheat Kings and Kelowna Rockets, and who knew what to make of that?

Everything became much easier to process when Paddock traded away four key 19-year-olds — forwards Morgan Klimchuk, Dryden Hunt and Connor Gay, along with defenceman/captain Kyle Burroughs — in early January to fortify the team for future seasons.

Predictably, the Pats levelled off. They have a 12-167-0 record since the trading frenzy began Jan. 2.

Of course, the numbers can be twisted in several ways. Members of the glassis-half-full set would point out that Regina has earned at least one point in 19 of 28 games since the veterans were dealt.

It should also be noted that Regina has maintained, and even secured, its second-place standing in the East Division. On Saturday, a sixth successive loss by the Swift Current Broncos — who have a tenuous grip on third place — guaranteed that Regina would finish second.

Paddock expressed optimism that Regina would remain in the No. 2 spot after Klimchuk, et al, were unloaded. The head coach’s comments were greeted by skepticism, at least in this space.

On Jan. 7, for example, my column was headlined: “Another season all but ruined.’’

The premise was that the two most-prominent Reginabased sports franchises — the Pats and Saskatchewan Roughriders — were specializing in letdowns.

The Roughriders had an 8-2 record in games started by quarterback Darian Durant, who suffered a season-ending elbow injury on Sept. 7. Sans Durant, the Roughriders were sunk, and a comparable fate assuredly awaited the Pats after the veteran nucleus of a winning team was dismantled.

Uh, it didn’t exactly unfold that way.

Although the Pats have a losing record since the midseason makeover, the season has not been “ruined.’’

Diminished, maybe, but there is still plenty to see.

The uptempo style of play has not changed. Neither has the second-place standing.

That is more than a skeptical observer could have envisioned two months ago ... or five months ago ... or a year before that ... or ...