Weekend Wrap Up

The team is on it's way home from one of the longer road trips of the season (about 2000km round trip). They went up against some top-ranked teams and were without Tyler Toffoli who was sick. They also continue without the services of Demers and Cowick but Jon Carnevale was back in the lineup.

The first game was on Thursday in Windsor where the Spits were likely remembering the loss in Ottawa not so long ago. I only caught a bit of the game listening to Team1200 and despite getting a two-goal jump on the Spits, they lost 8-5. They allowed 7 unanswered goals! Here's the game sheet - you can tell as good a story as me from looking at it. On the upside: they capitalized on two of their 4 power plays and didn't allow Windsor to score on either of their two power play chances.

Then it was a short trip to Plymouth for the Friday game where they were unable to get the tying goal after Cody Lindsay closed the gap in the third. Here's that game sheet for you. Again, specialty teams appear to be getting better; a PPG and they held off Plymouth from scoring on all 6 of their power play chances. Mrazek held his own - 38 saves in a 3-2 loss.

The final leg of the trip was in Saginaw where the team met up with former Ottawa67s trainer Brian Patafie and the third place Saginaw Spirit for a Saturday night game. Saginaw had just returned from Sault Ste Marie where they beat the 'Hounds 4-1 the night before, scoring 3 of those goals on the powerplay. Ottawa dug deep and won that game 3-2 getting two PPGs and not allowing any PPGs against. This is starting to look good for the specialty teams. Here's that game sheet for you.

Some observations after 13 games (almost 20% of the season):

• Cuma seems to have caught the eyes of the refs (especially this past weekend - he had a few penalties to add to his stats). He leads the team with 20 of the 226 PIMs doled out to the 67s (Dalton Smith is a close second with 19). The 67s rank 18th in the league in PIMs averaging 17.4 PIMs per game.
  
• Ryan Martindale (16 points), Cody Lindsay (15 points) and Anthony Nigro (7 points) are averaging better than a point-a-game so far (Martindale and Lindsay have played 13 games; Nigro 6). Martindale is in 20th spot in scoring in the league and Lindsay is 24th.
  
• On the plus/minus front, Nesbitt has the best at plus-5; Nigro the worst at minus-5.
  
• There are three games on today's slate but at this moment Ottawa has managed to move out of the basement on specialty teams: now 17th in the league for the PK and 19th on the PP. Not huge leaps but positive movement all the same. They went 5/14 over the weekend on the PP and were perfect 0/10 on the PK. They did allow one shortie to Windsor on Thursday.
  
• On the goalie front, Petr Mrazek and Chris Perugini rank 19th and 23rd in the league respectively.
  
• With a record of 3-7-2-1 Ottawa is now in 9th place in the Eastern Conference. This will change if Sudbury beats Brampton later today.
  

So, they end their 7-game losing streak playing the third-game in three on the road against a pretty good team. They are trending in the right direction on specialty teams. Hopefully this will contribute to trending in the right direction for wins too!

See you on Friday when the (currently) third-place Mississauga St. Michael's Majors pay a visit.