Dean demands more in D zone
by Peter Ruicci (Independent Media) | Photo by Bob Davies
While meeting with the media on Sunday, as part of the post-mortem following a humbling 9-4 loss to the Windsor Spitfires, Soo Greyhounds head coach John Dean made one thing abundantly clear.
Video from a contest that saw the home team down 7-2 before the second period was five-minutes old, would not be discarded.
“We’re not parking this one. There are games where you just don’t have it and things aren’t going your way,” the coach said. “And you just park (forget about) those games. But this was a game of self-inflicted wounds and lack of compete. There are a lot of things that need to be shown (to the players). We’re not throwing this tape away at all.”
Dean, whose team dropped its fourth straight, spoke of using the game video to show his skaters what it looks like when they don’t play well and how good teams take advantage of it.
Following the contest, video analyst and director of analytics Ryan Dumoulin edited a series of clips that displayed the Soo’s defensive-zone performance. Dean and assistant coaches Brendan Taylor and Brent Hughes reviewed those clips twice.
“I think it was pretty clear our D zone wasn’t organized,” Dean, whose team takes a 14-19-7-5 mark into Windsor (29-12-3-1) for Thursday’s 7:05 p.m. start, said on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, following Monday’s off day, Hounds players gathered in their dressing room and watched the edited presentation.
“We walked through all of the areas of D-zone coverage we thought effort and compete could’ve changed,” Dean explained, before noting how the players also saw areas in which breakdowns occurred because systems weren’t executed. “We try to keep team video as positive as possible. But obviously, the Windsor game didn’t allow us to do that.”
Once video review was over, Dean said the coaches and players hit the ice and “executed what we had just talked about in practice.”
Winger Marco Mignosa acknowledged the difficulty the Soo had on Sunday, being out-chanced by a wide margin and eventually outshot, 42-19.
“We’re going to go into Thursday’s game with a D-first mentality,” Mignosa said. “Intensity and physicality and buying into our structure is a big part of it. We know they’re a good team, so we have to bring our A game every time we face them.”
Following Thursday’s clash, the Soo has three more meetings with Windsor before the regular season concludes in late March.
Rookie winger Alex Kostov also spoke of the need for the Hounds to “bring a lot more fire – especially in the defensive zone.”
The Mississauga native talked about how the Hounds way of thinking changed early in Sunday’s game.
Within roughly the first 12 minutes “four goals were scored, two for each team,” Kostov recalled. “And our mindset kind of changed where we thought ‘it’s a points night.’ I think we have to stick to our systems and truly believe what our coaches are preaching to us.”
Asked if he plans to appeal to his players’ sense of pride before the game, Dean said that’s likely to happen.
He talked about discussing pride, the situation the Hounds are in as they fight for a Western Conference playoff spot, and how a number of the negative circumstances they found themselves in on Sunday were the result of things they could control.
As he searches for positives, Dean could surely point to the efforts of veteran players Ryan Thompson and Mark Duarte, who continued to block shots in the third period despite their club’s sizeable deficit. Asked about the two overages, the coach praised both, along with rookie winger Daylen Moses.
“There was some pushback in the third. Our guys competed a lot harder,” Dean said. “Dewey, Thompson, Moses and some of the other guys set an example.”
Following Thursday’s clash in Windsor, the Soo travels to Sarnia for Friday’s 7:05 p.m. start. The Sting stopped the Greyhounds 5-2 last Friday at GFL Memorial Gardens. On Sunday, the Hounds are slated to play host to Mississauga in a 2:07 p.m. start.
Meantime, in a season where injuries have surely taken a toll, the Hounds teased some good news on Wednesday.
While goalie Charlie Schenkel, out for more than two months with an upper-body injury, is not on this trip, Dean offered this: “There’s a chance he could join us, possibly.”
So, is there a chance Schenkel could play, snapping Samuel Ivanov’s streak of 22 consecutive starts?
“If he joins up with us, there’s a possibility he could play,” Dean answered. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t bring him in.”
Notes:
Connor Toms (lower body), Andrew Gibson (lower body) and Ethan Montroy (upper body) remain sidelined with injuries. Winger Connor Clattenburg is eligible to play on Thursday after serving a two-game, league-imposed suspension.
