Growing pains are costing Bulldogs
Hamilton drops two games at home this weekend and is now 1-3
The head coach of the Hamilton Bulldogs was two when “Growing Pains” debuted and was only nine when it wrapped. So he’d hardly be considered an expert on the sitcom. It’s unclear if he’s ever watched an episode.
But when talking about his team’s start to the Ontario Hockey League season, he cites the title more than a 1980s TV critic.
“These are good growing pains,” Vince Laise says.
A coach has to look for positives when his team drops two games at home on the weekend — including a 7-3 result to the always-powerful London Knights — and now sits 1-3 having given up 20 goals in those games and has one of the lowest-ranked penalty kills in the league.
“We have to go through it and understand what to model our game after,” Laise says. “I mean, it’s disappointing obviously, the start we’ve had, but this is part of the process.”
Growing pains are a part of youth. And it’s been mentioned here before that this is a young group. That’s going to lead to some messes with the puck and some defensive zone breakdowns and some nights when the penalty kill looks like it might never get through another penalty without giving up a goal.
That said, Laise and his team have also had some rather lousy luck with which to contend.
Zach Roy is the team’s No. 1 goalie. They’ll need him this year to be competitive. But while warming up with a soccer ball under the stands prior to Friday’s game, another player accidentally kicked him in the head. The team is calling it an upper body injury.
So backup Marco Costantini went in and played really well in the 2-1 loss to Windsor. He would’ve had a chance to play again the next night but he apparently got banged up during the game. Right before puck drop Saturday, he said he wasn’t good to go.
That meant 16-year-old Matteo Drobac was forced into action for his first start, just months after being drafted. Against a really good team. London scored on its second shot. Then its fifth. And its sixth. A dump-in from the Knights’ zone also hit the post and the goalie took a penalty for playing the puck outside the trapezoid behind his net.
Even if Laise thought about making a change — he says he didn’t — who was he going to put in? “I mean, we can’t put in a goalie who’s quite clearly not able to be in there, so we’ve got to take our lumps right now,” he says.
For the record, after Drobac sprawled across his crease to make an outstanding nochance save on a two-on-one he seemed to settle down and played well. Even as his team left him exposed more than a few times.
Point is, stuff just isn’t coming easy for Hamilton right now. The Bulldogs are neither mature enough nor disciplined enough at this point to be making things any more difficult for themselves than necessary. They can’t be taking bad penalties. They can’t be careless with the puck. They can’t coast by on anything less than 100 per cent. These are the growing pains. “This is when you see what people are all about,” Laise says. “Not when things are good.”
Truth is, if Laise really wanted to go down an ’80s sitcom rabbit hole, he could also refer to this being the “Facts of Life” for a young team (sorry) or even cite the “Family Ties” (really sorry) that hurt on Saturday when former Bulldog Connor McMichael had a hat trick and Jonathan Gruden — son of the former head coach — had two goals.
He could even mention that the team’s penalty killers were looking like “Perfect Strangers” (oh geez), these aren’t yet the “Good Times” (please send help) or even ... ah ... forget it.
In the midst of this struggle, there is hope.
Two of the three teams the Bulldogs face next weekend are having even tougher starts than they are. Neither the Kingston Frontenacs nor Mississauga Steelheads score a lot. It might be just the tonic Hamilton needs to get some confidence, figure some stuff out on the defensive side of things and get on track.
Which means this time next week, it could be “A Different World.”
OK, we’re done.