(Photo: Oil Barons forward Landon Welykholowa (25 white) tries to slide the puck past Pontiacs goaltender Josh Williams on September 29th, 2015. Taylor Pope/ REPORTER)
AUDIO: Oil Barons Head Coach Tom Keca discusses the 4-2 loss below
Post-game interview – Oct. 17, 2015 – Tom Keca by Bradley Karp on Mixcloud
The Oil Barons put forward a disappointing effort in a 4-2 loss to the Olds Grizzlys to wrap up a three game swing that also saw them lose 5-2 to Okotoks on Thursday and 4-3 in overtime to Drumheller Friday.
While the effort was there on through thirty minutes on Thursday and for a full sixty plus minutes Friday it was lacking last night.
“A disappointing effort to be honest in the first period I think for the longest time we only had one shot on net,” said Head Coach Tom Keca on the ROCK 97.9 post-game show. “The message to the players after the game was that we’re not skilled enough that we’re gonna out-skill teams and we’ve got to make sure that we have a work ethic that’s gonna give us an opportunity to get points and we didn’t have that tonight.”
It’s tough to win hockey games when you allow three goals on the power-play, and that’s what Olds was able to do with their five opportunities on the man-advantage. The Grizzlys found shooting lanes and were allowed to screen Ravi Dattani who at times again tonight was left to fend for himself.
“It’s the difference in the game [power-play goals], we talk about getting your body and shooting lanes and sticks in passing lanes and there’s a difference between the willingness to block shots and then just getting hit by pucks. I think the difference was that our guys were hoping we were going to get hit their guys blocked shots. I thought they did an outstanding job especially in the second period when we had a little bit of momentum on our power-play.”
After allowing a soft goal to start the game Dattani returned to his regularly excellent play stopping 26 of 30 shots on the night. Kurtis Chapman was great, made a few spectacular saves when called upon but most of his 23 saves on 25 shots came from outside of the danger zone.
Landon Welykholowa scored on the power-play again six of his seven team leading goals have come on the man-advantage. While Logan Franz begins to look more and more comfortable in a top six role, he scored just 1:57 into the second period to pull the MOB within a goal. Franz finished the night with a goal and an assist, as did Welykholowa.
When asked on the post-game show whether or not he’ll be making any moves this week Keca barely let me finish the question before answering, “there has to be, it’s not good enough, we’re a quarter of the way of the season in and it’s just not good enough so we’ll have to make some changes here, it’s unfortunate because I hate doing it because I didn’t want to do it. But what we have right now is just not allowing us to be successful we’re going to sit down we’re going to look at everything and see what the areas of concern area.”
The Oil Barons host the Sherwood Park Crusaders on Wednesday, followed by road games in Spruce Grove Saturday, and Sherwood Park on Sunday.
