Changes coming for the Spits?

by Rob Benneian

What a difference a year makes.

Last season, Windsor Spitfires head coach Bob Boughner said he would be thrilled if the team won 30 games, the mark he figured they would need to make the Ontario Hockey League playoffs.

They came up one short with a record of 29-32-5-2, but qualified for the post-season by finishing in eighth place in the Western Conference. They were summarily dismissed by the first-place, and eventual league-champion, London Knights in a four-game sweep.

As the Spitfires wrap up the first third of their 2012-13 campaign, they are on pace to finish with more points and a higher seed in the standings than they did a year ago. This is despite the fact the Western Conference is widely considered to be much more competitive than it was last season, with teams like the Guelph Storm, Soo Greyhounds and Owen Sound Attack much improved from a year ago.

Yet the Spits still aren’t happy with their performance to date. A roster comprised of a nucleus of 1994 birth year players including leading goal-scorer Kerby Rychel, NHL draftees Brady Vail, Michael Clarke, Ben Johnson, Nick Ebert and Patrick Sieloff has not yielded the kind of success the team’s brass would like to see.

Following a 5-3 loss to the Whalers Nov. 9, their third straight defeat, Spitfires general manager Warren Rychel was upset with the direction of the team.

“There’s going to be changes,” the Spits GM said in a Nov. 9 Windsor Star article. “When the coaches care more than some of the players, there has to be changes.”

Overage forward Derek Schoenmakers was brought in via a pre-season trade with the Sudbury Wolves to provide offence and veteran leadership. The Kitchener-native had 25 goals and 50 points last season.

“We know we haven’t been playing well lately and that’s gotta change at the end of the day, whether it’s the guys we have in here or it’s somebody else,” said Schoenmakers.

Spits assistant coach David Matsos is in his third season with the team. The former Elite Ice Hockey League coach of the year has helped guide the Spitfires to the playoffs in each of the previous two seasons.

“Coming into this year with guys that are a year older, we expected them to step to the next level. We were hoping guys would step it up and they just haven’t,” Matsos said. “If you look at our forwards, defence, the only thing that has been consistent in our minds has been goaltending. We’ve gotta consider bringing in a top-four defenceman and then up front I think there’s room for one more (player).”

That one player might be a familiar face. The Spitfires claimed Russian centre Alexander Khokhlachev on re-entry waivers Oct. 5 and have been taking a wait-and-see approach since. Khokhlachev left the Spits at the conclusion of the 2011-12 season for his father’s team in the Russian Kontinental Hockey League. He has been back in North America for the Subway Super Series and the Spits are hopeful they will be able to lure him back to Windsor.

“If he does decide to make the move back here, you’re injecting a guy who’s a 100-point guy in this league. You can’t replace a guy like that when he left,” said Matsos.

The 19-year-old native of Moscow registered 145 points in 123 OHL games, all with the Spitfires, before joining Spartak Moscow. Khokhlachev has scored just once in 19 games in Russia.

With OHL teams able to carry two non-North American or “import” players on their roster, Khokhlachev’s departure has left a hole the Spitfires have been unsuccessfully trying to fill. First, they drafted Russian winger Vladimir Ionin in the annual Canadian Hockey League Import Draft, but he was cut when he failed to make the opening day roster after struggling in training camp. The team then traded forward Nick Czinder and defenceman Jeff Braithwaite to Kitchener for Slovakian winger Juraj Bezuch, but he played just four games and was held pointless before he too was released.

“It hurts, it really does,” Matsos said of playing with only one import player, goaltender Jaroslav Pavelka of the Czech Republic. “(Khokhlachev) is a point-and-a-half per night and for a team that’s lacking scoring five-on-five … (and) without a real power play quarterback. It’s been damage control. You get a guy like Koko, he’s your most offensive guy, he’s a guy that will slow things down on the power play, he’s a number one half-wall guy.”

Koko or no Koko, the Spitfires will need something to change before they find themselves on the outside looking in.