Slow starts are nothing new for the Barrie Colts this season.
Only now, they’re beginning to pay a price for them.
Another listless start Thursday night resulted in the Colts digging themselves an early hole they couldn’t get out of, falling behind 4-0 midway through the second period en route to a 5-2 loss to the Petes at the Peterborough Memorial Centre.
The disappointing loss to the OHL’s last-place team came on the heels of a 5-2 defeat 24 hours earlier at the hands of the Eastern Conference cellar-dwelling Owen Sound Attack.
It marked the third-straight loss for Barrie (24-12-1-1) – its longest losing skid of the season – and continued the trend of bad starts.
“We talked about it before the game. Our first periods haven’t been our best,” said defenceman Grayson Tiller, who along with his teammates will look to snap the skid Saturday night at home against the Kitchener Rangers. “We’ve been very inconsistent with them, and we got to sharpen up on them.
“We’re going to keep losing games because we keep having a bad first. We got to come out and have a good jump to our game on Saturday night at home.”
Michael Derbidge and Dalyn Wakely scored for the Colts a little less than two minutes apart later in the second period to cut the lead to 4-2, but it was close as they would get.
Nico Addy, Jonathan Melee, Aiden Young, Caden Taylor, and Liam Ladds scored for the Petes (9-24-2-4), who bagged a second-straight win for just the second time this season.
“The starts have been something we’ve been focusing on, so we’re just going to have to clean it up a little bit,” said Colts’ assistant coach Dylan Smoskowitz. “It’s always tough to dig out of a hole. We want to start at least on an even playing field. You go into the second period, and it’s tied 0-0, you feel pretty good about yourselves, even if you don’t have the lead.
“But always getting behind the eight-ball like we do, guys start squeezing their sticks and pushing a little bit too hard. So, that’s something we’re aware of and we’re definitely going to work on.”
Tiller says the effort is there.
“I say it’s up in our heads right now,” the veteran defenceman said. “We got to focus on the details more. We got to mentally be together. We got to play as a five-man unit all over the ice, up and down in the defensive zone and also the offensive zone, and we’re just not doing that right now.”
Barrie, which had just six shots in the opening period, has been outscored 36-24 in the first frame this season.
“We haven’t been getting pucks on the net,” said Tiller. “I feel we’re trying to be too cute. You look at (Wakely’s) goal, he just threw the puck at the net hoping for good things and it ended up going in.
“We have to get more pucks to the net, more bodies to the net and we’ll be just fine.”
The loss, paired with Niagara’s 7-2 win over the Saginaw Spirit, drops the Colts a point behind the IceDogs atop both the Eastern Conference and Central Division standings.
The race for home ice in the conference is likely to go to the wire and a pair of losses to two of the league’s struggling teams appears an opportunity missed.
“Every game is important,” said Smoskowitz. “I think the way we look at it is we’ve given up two games now that we probably thought, going in, we should have won. All that means is we’re going to have two more games at some point this year – we got about 30 left – where maybe there’s a schedule imbalance and we’ll have to get these games back.
“There’s nothing we can do now, but learn from it, which we will. I guarantee we will do that. Show the guys a bunch of videos and learn from our mistakes. Move forward here and earn points.”
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The OHL Trade Deadline is Friday at noon before the Colts look for some home cooking to get them back on track against a very good Kitchener team that boasts the OHL’s third-best record (28-7-2-1).
The Colts have lost five straight to the Rangers dating back to a 6-4 Barrie win in Kitchener on March 6, 2020.
“It’s a great opportunity for us to be at home in front of our fans on a Saturday night,” said Smoskowitz. “The guys love playing in front of our fans on a Saturday night at Sadlon and to have Kitchener in town makes it a little more exciting.
“Kitchener is doing so well this year. It’s a great opportunity for us to rebound.”
Game time is 7:30 p.m.
ICE CHIPS: With assistant coach Dennis Martindale away (personal), team owner Howie Campbell stepped behind the bench. . . Owen Van Steensel drew an assist on Wakely’s goal for his first point as a Barrie Colt. . . Sam Hillebrandt made his first start in goal for Barrie since returning from worlds, giving up five goals on 37 shots. Easton Rye stopped 23 of 25 shots he faced over 40 minutes after replacing starter Zach Bowen after the first period. Bowen stopped all six shots he faced. . . Kashawn Aitcheson, who was named an assistant captain for next week’s OHL Top Prospect Game in Brantford, had a tough night, finishing a minus 4. . . Jaiden Newton served the first of his automatic two-game suspension for instigating a fight with under five minutes remaining in the loss to Owen Sound. . . Derbidge has four of his five goals in the last six games.
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