COLTS BEGIN TOUGH MONTH OF FEBRUARY
The Barrie Colts begin their February schedule Thursday night against Dalton Prout and the Saginaw Spirit (32-13-3-1). It is the first matchup of the season between the two clubs, who will meet in Saginaw in a couple of weeks.
On Thursday the Colts kick off another set of three games in three nights, a task they will face four times this month. In the last five years no team in the OHL has played four sets of three games in three nights in one calendar month.
With nine wins on the season the Colts would need a small miracle to avoid setting a franchise record for futility. They would need to win 19 of their 20 remaining games to tie their 28-win season back in 2007-08.
The Colts have never missed the playoffs in their 15-year existence and are only ten points shy of the Peterborough Petes for the eighth and final playoff position in the Eastern Conference.
Barrie is coming off a 2-1 win over the Brampton Battalion last Saturday and will take on the top team in the Western Conference Thursday night at the BMC. The Colts have defeated five of the top nine teams in the Ontario Hockey League and will look to continue their strong play against the league’s front-runners.
Barrie will welcome back two key cogs from their Eastern Conference winning team last season. Dalton Prout was traded to the Spirit at the trade deadline in exchange for Matt Ashman, Alex Lepkowski and a pair of draft picks.
Barrie’s former captain joins ex-Colts Mavric Parks and Ryan O’Connor in Saginaw, the seventh ranked team in the CHL.
After scoring a goal in his first game, Prout has struggled offensively with the Spirit. The 6’3” rear-guard has just two points and is a minus-two in ten games played since joining the Western Conference leaders.
Mavric Parks has played in 37 games for Saginaw and has a goals against average of 2.80, with a record of 23-11-0-1.
The Colts will travel to Oshawa on Friday and host Kingston on Saturday; a pair of Eastern Conference clubs the Colts have defeated this season.
Barrie beat Oshawa 7-5 on the last day before Christmas break, but were then spanked by the Generals 8-2 on January 8th.
On Saturday the Colts have a chance to even the season-series with the fourth-place Generals, before returning home to host the fifth-place Kingston Frontenacs on Saturday night.
Kingston will be looking to exact some revenge on the Colts in just the second of four meetings between the two clubs. Barrie shocked the Frontenacs in Kingston back on November 5th with a 5-1 win.
The Colts and Fronts’ will meet three times in the final 20 games of the season.
Of the Colts remaining 20 games, nine of them come against teams that are in the top-10 in the league. Barrie will play twice against Conference-leaders Mississauga and Saginaw, twice against Ottawa and once against Niagara.
