Pats face Blazers at home
The Regina Pats must have missed their wake-up call.
After sleepwalking through most of the first period, Regina showed up a little too late for its game against the Kamloops Blazers on Tuesday, dropping a 4-3 heartbreaker in front of 3,267 fans at the Brandt Centre.
“The way we played in the first period, (the players) must be absolutely tone deaf,” said Pats head coach/GM John Paddock, noting that the Blazers have gone 15-4-4 since opening the schedule with six losses in a row. “They play a fast game. I knew that from watching them practise. We didn’t have many players (keeping pace) in the first period. It was really bad.”
The end result could have been worse if Regina hadn’t emerged from its early slumber to make a game of it in the third period.
Trailing 4-1 after 40 minutes, the Pats scored twice in the final frame and came close to adding a third, only to watch time run out on their comeback.
“They woke up,” noted Paddock. “But it’s just like the start of the season. you don’t make the playoffs in the first month but you can lose it. You can lose the game in the first period. It doesn’t really matter what you did the rest (of the way). It’s not good.”
The Pats surrendered the first eight shots of the game and failed to record one of their own until the 10-minute mark, a slow dribbler off the stick of Colby Williams.
The home team didn’t wake up until the last five minutes of the first period, ending the frame in a 2-1 hole courtesy of goals by Gage Quinney and Matt Needham.
Regina got on the board with 7.1 seconds on the clock when Sam Steel played give-and-go with Aaron Macklin, deflecting the return feed past goalie Connor Ingram.
The Pats outshot Kamloops 1612 in the second period but had nothing to show for it except a 4-1 deficit.
Blazers leading scorer Collin Shirley did most of the damage, beginning with a long breakaway pass that resulted in a short-handed goal for Garrett Pilon. Shirley did the honours himself just 2:18 later when he snatched the puck in front of Regina’s net and was left all alone to sweep it around a helpless Tyler Brown.
The Pats began their uprising 7:10 into the final frame when Taylor Cooper grabbed the puck in the corner and centred to Chase Harrison, who fired it past the glove of Ingram.
Adam Brooks made it 4-3 with 7:20 left in regulation, tapping in a gift from Jared Freadrich after his wrist shot pin-balled its way to the side of the net. Pressing for the equalizer, the Pats sent Brown to the bench in favour of an extra attacker but Ingram stood tall in the closing minutes to seal the win.
“It was almost like three different games out there,” said Blazers head coach Don Hay, whose team was outshot 42-31, including 16-5 in the third period. “We controlled the first and the second was kind of even but we struck for a couple quick goals. Then they controlled the third. Once they made it 4-2 the race was on to see who would get the next goal.”
The Pats got it, but Kamloops still came away with the win.
“They really pushed us,” added Hay. “We weren’t as good in the third as we needed to be and we didn’t put them away when we had the opportunity. They just kept coming at us. Give them credit. They played hard.”
The wild finish was of little consolation to the Pats, who could only look back at what might have been if they had showed up in the first period.
“The start of the game sets the tone for the rest of the game,” said Harrison. “We came out pretty flat and kind of gave them the upper hand. We did a good job with that pushback at the end but we can’t be digging ourselves a hole like that in the first period.”
The Pats (15-14-2-2) have lost five of their last six games during the busiest portion of their schedule, concluding a stretch of five games in seven nights. Paddock conceded that his team’ s slow start could probably be explained but not excused.
“That’s part of hockey,” he said. “Maybe you’re going to learn from it but it’s not something we can accept.”