Nearly half the players sick or injured
It’s no secret that the Hamilton Red Wings haven’t been playing well recently.
One major reason for the eight-game losing slide is that many of the players were probably not feeling well during those games.
A mini-epidemic of flu and measles has swept through the dressing room over the last two weeks and when you add players who are out of the line-up due to injury, the Red Wings roster has been decimated more than at any time in the junior hockey club’s history.
When the Red Wings hit the ice against Buffalo on Monday, they were missing eight regulars, four due to sickness and four due to injury.
Those missing included starting goalie Dalton McGrath who was home sick.
Two forwards Nick Scamurra and Ben Walsh were playing sick and not able to perform at the top of their game.
Adding to the team’s problems, feisty forward Liam Bird left the game after the first period with a separated shoulder.
“I’ve been coaching junior hockey for 11 years and I’ve never run into this ever in my life where I’ve looked on a bench and had six or seven forwards and have no consistency in line-ups because you have guys daily that are getting sick and getting injured,” lamented Red Wings head coach Scott Elliot, who has managed to avoid the bug that has also sidelined the team’s equipment manager Trevor Castonguay with pneumonia and the measles and sent team president and general manager Robert Turnbull to bed for two days.
On the way home from last Friday’s game in Huntsville, three players were throwing up on the bus.
The Red Wings finished Monday’s 5-2 loss to Buffalo with 13 skaters; two were call-ups from the Toronto Marlies AAA midget squad.
Elliot said he asked for five players but only two were available as Marlies players were in the midst of high school exams.
With only two lines and players who normally get 10-12 minutes of ice time now getting 30 or 40 minutes, Elliot said he’s trying to keep the game plan simple with the hope the sick players get well soon.
But he doesn’t know how soon that will be.
Red Wings captain Dalton Jay noted the short bench makes it difficult to face teams who roll four lines against them.
They usually begin to run out of gas by the third period.
“It’s rough,” he said. “We get tired real quick and teams take advantage of us.”
Despite the short bench, the Red Wings held their own against the Junior Sabres for two periods until things feel apart in the third.
The turning point came at the 4:12 mark of the final frame.
Trailing 3-1, but with a chance to pull within a goal on the power play, Hamilton goalie Paul Orlando left the net to retrieve the puck that had been cleared by the visitors and to fire it back up the ice.
Buffalo defenceman Jacob Ledyard pounced on the netminder’s pass and blasted it 50 feet back into the Red Wings’ goal before Orlando could get back in the net.
Elliot was clearly not pleased with the effort of his troops and he gave them a verbal blast after the game that is still probably echoing through the vents and ductwork at the Dave Andreychuk-Mountain Arena.
“It had nothing to do with the fact we lost the game,” Elliot said. “What it has to do with is the reaction these guys have after losing a game, after making a bad play, after making a bad pass, after missing a hit. They have to understand they have to grow from losses, they have to use this stuff as a character builder and build from it and they’re not doing it.”
The losing skid has dropped the Red Wings into fifth place in the OJHL West Division, three points ahead of sixth place Milton, who at press time had three games in hand.
The top six teams in the seven team division qualify for the post season and the Red Wings have a guaranteed playoff birth.
Hamilton visits last place Brampton on Thursday.
The Red Wings and wrap up the regular season in Burlington on Saturday and at home against Milton on Monday.
Game time is 7:30 p.m. at the Dave Andreychuk-Mountain Arena.
