In the start of one of their longest road trips of the season, it wasn’t anything close to a good start.
After falling behind 3-0 before the game was 11 minutes old, the Soo Greyhounds dropped a 6-2 Ontario Hockey League decision to the Peterborough Petes at the Peterborough Memorial Centre on Thursday night.
“It’s probably up there for one of our poorest games,” said Greyhounds captain Bryce McConnell-Barker.
“When you go down quickly like that, it’s tough,” added Greyhounds coach John Dean. “It takes some wind out of your sails. We have a team that competes until the end. I’m not sure if they know what the proper way of competing looks like this year, but I do give them credit, they’re pretty resilient to the end and I wish these guys would give themselves a chance and do it right from the drop of the puck.”
The first period was a struggle to say the least for the Greyhounds.
“We got out-competed in the first, there’s no doubt about that,” Dean said. “Our defencemen were very slow to move pucks and continued to turn back in our own zone in a rink where you just can’t turn back. You have to skate through and use your speed. That caused us a lot of problems.”
Dean added that the Petes “skated through and used their speed very well and generated a lot of chances off the rush.”
With the team returning to action on Friday night, the 24-hour turnaround is being looked at as a good thing following a sub-par effort against Peterborough.
“It’s good to have a short memory, but it’s also huge to be motivated,” McConnell-Barker said. “We’ve lost six games in a row. I’m not happy and our team shouldn’t be happy with that either. Going into tomorrow, I’m really motivated to win that game.”
Peterborough opened the scoring 4:32 into the opening period when defenceman Konnor Smith got the puck at the top of the right circle and beat Greyhounds goaltender Charlie Schenkel through a screen in close by Sahil Panwar.
Tucker Robertson made it 2-0 Peterborough on the power play after he snuck in behind the Greyhounds defencemen and took a pass from Connor Lockhart before deking Schenkel to the stick side.
Midway through the period, the Petes went up 3-0 as Nick Lardis potted a rebound past Schenkel after the Greyhounds netminder initially stopped a redirection by the Petes forward.
Kalvyn Watson got the Greyhounds on the board 52 seconds later when he drove the Peterborough net and redirected a pass from Tyler Savard on the left wing past Michael Simpson.
With just under six minutes to go in the second period, Brian Zanetti jumped on a loose puck in the slot and beat Schenkel after a shot by Lardis from the left side was blocked on its way to the net.
Peterborough went up by a 5-1 margin 2:26 into the third when Chase Stillman batted in a rebound after Panwar’s initial shot from the right circle was stopped by Schenkel.
Just 26 seconds later, Justin Cloutier got his second goal of the season, beating Simpson short side with a shot from the left faceoff circle.
Lockhart made it 6-2 with an empty net goal with 1:25 to go in regulation time.
Schenkel made 46 saves for the Greyhounds in the loss.
“We lean on him way too much unfortunately and we need him to be very good every night right now and we don’t want to have to be in that situation where we’re constantly relying on our goaltender,” Dean said.
Lardis paced the Petes offensively with a goal and a pair of assists while Lockhart and Stillman had one of each.
J.R. Avon, who had the overtime winner in the previous meeting between the two clubs in Sault Ste. Marie on Oct. 14, assisted on a pair of Peterborough goals in Thursday’s victory.
Simpson stopped 22 shots for Peterborough.
The Greyhounds road trip continues on Friday night in Kingston with a game against the Frontenacs.
Thursday’s loss drops the Greyhounds record to 2-4-3-1. The team currently sits fifth in the OHL’s West Division, three points behind the Saginaw Spirit and Sarnia Sting.
The Petes move to 7-3-1-0 with the win and move two points ahead of Kingston for second in the East Division, though the Frontenacs have two games in hand.
On the injury front for the Greyhounds, defenceman Caeden Carlisle sat out Thursday’s game and last played on Oct. 10 against Windsor. Dean said the blueliner is out day-to-day and could get back into the lineup at some point on this road trip.