Petes leading OHL in power play goals
The Peterborough Petes have had more power play opportunities and scored more power play goals than any other team in the OHL. It has been an obvious strength in the early part of the season.
The Petes have also been the better team in the majority of games they have played this year. It’s easy not to take penalties against teams you are better than. When you have possession of the puck the majority of the time, when you’re quicker and more skilled, it is the opposition resorting to hooking, holding and slashing to slow down the more skilled Petes team.
This weekend, the Petes faced teams more capable at playing at their level.
Thursday night against the Sting, the Petes took a pair of early penalties giving up early momentum and falling behind 3-0 early on. The Sting took the next six penalties of the game, allowing the Petes to come back and take the lead. The Sting later countered with two power play goals of their own to reclaim the lead for good.
These swings in penalties are typical of OHL officiating. The penalties ebb and flow but tend to end up fairly even at the end of the night. As there are fewer hits and fewer fights, there are seemingly more penalties called. The high number of power play opportunities seems to be the way hockey is headed.
It was a similar story on Saturday with the Petes and Colts each having seven chances with the man advantage and capitalizing for two goals each.
With so much of these games being played on special teams, the Petes units were weakened. Already without Logan Denoble and Zack Gallant – both of whom feature on both the power play and penalty kill, the Petes lost power play forward Adam Timleck to injury in Saturday’s game.
With so many key players missing from the lineup, the last thing the Petes could afford to do Sunday afternoon was spend a significant time in the penalty box.
That’s exactly what they did. Once again, the penalties started early in the game, giving Mississauga the early momentum. They carried that throughout the game, finishing with 12 power play opportunities resulting in five goals. The Petes saw their special teams weakened even further when Jonathan Ang – their best penalty killer and coleader in power play points – took a major penalty, taking himself out the game and likely a couple more.
Over the course of the weekend, an amazing 18 of 32 goals scored in the Petes three games came on special teams. Having scored more power play goals than any team in the league, the Petes should have been in prime position to take advantage but came away with only one win in three games.
The injuries are a factor without a doubt but the Petes will also have to adjust their game against higher skilled teams to be smarter, especially when so affected by injuries and stay out of the penalty box themselves. Trading power play opportunities has worked out well for the Petes on many nights but as we’ve seen them live off special teams for much of the year, we saw them die by it on Sunday.