Petes move into first place
Defenceman Cole Fraser fills in as a forward and scores the winning goal as Petes hold on for 2-1 win over Wolves.
The past two nights illustrated how fortunate the Peterborough Petes are to have two good goalies.
The Petes are back on top of the OHL’s Eastern Conference after a 2-1 win over the Sudbury Wolves Thursday night before 2,293 fans at the Memorial Centre.
The Petes second win in as many nights pushed them two points ahead of the Oshawa Generals who lost 7-1 in Windsor. Oshawa holds one game in hand. The Petes have earned points in eight of their last nine games and are 13-1 against the Central Division.
The Petes leaned heavily on Scott Smith’s first-star effort in Ottawa on Wednesday night in a 3-1 win. Dylan Wells wasn’t relied on as much Thursday until the last 90 seconds when Sudbury pressed with their goalie out for the extra attacker. Wells robbed Chandler Yakimowicz and Kyle Capobianco on point-blank saves moments apart.
“Wellsy was great for us and it’s been a good two games for our goaltenders,” said Petes assistant and goalie coach Andrew Verner. “I have no problem playing Scott Smith anywhere. He can play 40 games in this league right now and 55 to 60 next year. Wellsy has already proven he’s a number one goalie in this league. He’ll probably play 50 this year and 55 next year. It’s a nice problem to have. Scott is easily the best insurance policy in this league.”
The Petes had a much better start than they did Wednesday.
“We couldn’t have had less energy than (Wednesday). Anyone I talked to who watched the game said the same thing and we felt it on the bench,” Verner said.
“We were pretty good tonight but, on the flip side, we really want to put teams away like that when we’re up 2-0. Halfway through the second period we had a TV timeout when it was 2-0 and the bench kind of felt like we were up by four.
“We tried to address that but, sure enough, they scored within the next five minutes and it’s 2-1. You’re back into a game where you have to shorten the bench on back-to-back nights. We really didn’t want to.”
Chris Paquette put the Petes in front finishing a three-way passing play on the rush from Logan DeNoble and Adam Timleck who faked a shot and slid the pass to Paquette at 14:49.
Cole Fraser, making a rare appearance at forward, scored his second goal in as many nights to make it 2-0 at 17:41. Fraser stole the puck just outside Sudbury’s blue-line and snapped a shot over the shoulder of goalie Jake McGrath.
Fraser played forward in minor hockey until four years ago so he said he felt comfortable there.
‘I’m just glad I’m able to help the team in more than one place,” Fraser said. “I can always be that power forward who likes to throw the body around and shoot at the net and hope for the best.”
Verner says the coaches were impressed.
“(Sudbury) is a very heavy team. We’ve played two very tough games against Sudbury and Cole was a factor in both,” Verner said.
“What’s most impressive is he wasn’t running around, jumping at people or cross checking. He was just a physical force. He scored on snap shots from outside the circle which is a good lesson for some of our more skilled guys. If Cole is scoring from out here, you guys can do it, too.”
Sudbury came to life in the second period after killing off a fourminute high sticking penalty for the second time in the game. Leading scorer Dmitry Sokolov was left alone in the slot to bury David Levin’s rebound at 16:27.