WHL Pats search for answers amid losing skid
‘We need to look real deep down and find some answers quick,’ frustrated goalie Paddock says
Winter hasn’t officially arrived, but things are already beginning to snowball for the Regina Pats.
The WHL’s cellar dwellers have lost seven consecutive games since their 3-2 opening-night victory over the Moose Jaw Warriors.
As a result, Regina (1-7-0) is five points out of a playoff spot after just eight games.
“We need to look real deep down and find some answers quick,” said goalie Max Paddock, whose team just completed a gruelling stretch of four games in five nights. “We’ve had four wake-up calls after the past four games. None of them have been answered. We need to take a real hard look in the mirror and figure it out.”
The Pats are struggling to come to grips with their predicament — and not just because the losses have started piling up.
It’s also because of the way they’re losing.
Although the Pats have started relatively well in almost every game, it hasn’t been enough to carry them to the finish line.
The latest example was Tuesday night when Regina came out like gangbusters, only to watch the Edmonton Oil Kings erase a 3-0 deficit with five unanswered goals en route to a 5-3 victory.
“It’s super-frustrating,” Paddock said. “We’ve been in every game and then it just seems like we quit playing. When we come back after the first intermission, it’s like a different team.
“It’s hard to watch. I feel bad for the fans. I don’t feel bad for us in the room. We do it to ourselves. I feel bad for the people that are coming to watch us play.”
The view from ice level isn’t much better.
“It’s terrible,” captain Austin Pratt said. “We do so many good things in the first period and in practice and then that happens.
“It’s people just making little mistakes that cost us. We’re a team that has to play a full 60 (minutes) to get a win. If you don’t, things snowball on you.”
Although it’s still very early in the season, the Pats should be warned about the dangers of negative momentum.
“The positive side is we can stop it,” defenceman Kyle Walker said. “We can turn it the other way. I believe this team can still pull ourselves together and perhaps be a playoff team. It starts with the guys in the locker-room, especially right now. We just need time to relax. We have four days until our next game. We just need to reset and forget about these past eight games.”
The Pats aren’t back in action until Saturday against the Vancouver Giants before completing a three-game homestand on Sunday versus the Lethbridge Hurricanes.
At this point, the mental break is just as important as a physical respite.
“For us as coaches, it would be useless to go in there and beat these guys up,” said head coach Dave Struch, who gave his players Wednesday off. “(They need to) forget about the game of hockey, get away from it and get rested because of the stretch we just had.
“With the exception of the game on Saturday night (a 6-0 loss to Prince Albert) I felt we came out real strong in all the games. We’re going through a hard time here but we have a real good room, we have good leadership and we have to keep it positive.”