Road-weary Spitfires come up short in Saginaw
Coach knows team must find ways to beat top teams away from home by playoff time
The Windsor Spitfires were looking for more than just a point or two against the Saginaw Spirit. With Saginaw, Sault Ste. Marie, London and Guelph now the clear top four teams in the Western Conference, the Spitfires know that should the club secure a playoff spot it must find a road win to pull off a series upset in the playoffs. “We don’t have too many opportunities to play these top four down the stretch,” Spitfires head coach Trevor Letowski said. “If we’re going to win a round, we’ve got to win a road game against one of these teams.”
The Spitfires came up a goal short on Friday in Sault Ste. Marie and could not recover from a fourgoal deficit against the Spirit on Saturday in a 6-3 loss before 4,027 people at the Dow Event Center. “We might catch one of those two teams in the playoffs,” Spitfires forward Daniel D’Amico said. “So, getting a win would have been huge to send a message not only to them, but the whole league.” There were factors working against the Spitfires in back-toback road games. The first was the travel involved with the club leaving right after Thursday’s home game the journey to Sault Ste. Marie and then heading back to Saginaw.
“Overall, we were in tough with the travel and two of the best teams in the league,” Letowski said. The three games in three days also came with the club playing with a short roster. Newly acquired Ben Garagan is out with a wrist injury, which left the club one under the league’s 20-man limit.
It went to 18 players before Saturday ’s game when Chris Playfair, who just returned from a 15-game absence from a concussion on Thursday, missed the game with concussion-like symptoms. The club was down to nine forwards and 17 players early in the second period when the Spitfires lost Curtis Douglas, who was given a kneeing major and game misconduct after colliding with Saginaw’s Jake Goldowski. It was called a tripping minor originally, but changed to a major. Goldowski, who had to be helped off the ice, did return to the game.
“It’s very hard, especially rolling three lines, you get tired,” D’Amico said. “It’s not an excuse. If you get pucks deep and shifts short, you can do something about it.” But there were also positives from both games from the Spitfires to draw from. The club did not have a lead in either game, but continued to battle back in both games. “It’s hard to win on the road against those teams,” Letowski said. “We need one (goal) to fall. We’re coming, we just need to get one and it didn’t happen these two games.”
Windsor had a 7-3 edge in shots to start Saturday’s game, but Albert Michnac’s power play goal got Saginaw on the board and Windsor did not have another shot in the period with Cole Perfetti pushing the Spirit lead to 2-0 after 20 minutes. “A penalty can kill you like that, but I thought, after the first goal, I think we could have came back and kept working on getting shots to the net,” D’Amico said. “We should have just got back into the offensive zone.”
Reagan O’Grady pushed the lead to 3-0 and the Douglas major allowed the Spirit to go up 4-0 on a Cole Coskey goal, but Angle scored a short-handed goal while killing that major and added a power-play goal to get Windsor back to within 4-2.
“Comebacks are hard,” Angle said. “It’s nice to come back, but turnovers cost us a little and we could have done a better job of getting pucks out.”
Owen Tippett restored Saginaw’s three-goal lead before the end of the period and Letowski opted to go to veteran goalie Colton Incze for the third period after rookie goalie Kari Piiroinen allowed five goals on 16 shots through two periods. “I considered doing it earlier,” Letowski said. “I just thought (Piiroinen) was off.” D’Amico’s power play goal in the first minute of the third period cut the Windsor deficit to 5-3, but, despite outshooting the Spirit 2714 over the final 40 minutes, the Spitfires could get no closer and Coskey sealed it with an emptynet goal.
“It was a big test and, not for 60, but we pushed them the second
half of the game” Letowski said. “We take some positives because we were able to play with them for pretty big chunks of the game. We’re not hanging our heads and getting blown out.”