It’s rivalry week across the Ontario Hockey League (OHL). On Friday night, we got to watch the Kitchener Rangers and London Knights square off, one of the OHL’s most anticipated rivalries.
Last season, the Knights were able to take four of six games from the Rangers, and have dominated this rivalry in recent memory, having a 19-5-4-0 record over the Blueshirts in the last five seasons.
To add even more fuel to the rivalry, the Knights knocked the Rangers out of the playoffs last season in the Western Conference Final. With this much history, you would have thought the Rangers would have been amped up for this game in front of their home crowd. However, it was another slow start we have seen far too often this season, giving up the first goal of the game early in the first period.
The Knights went on to embarrass the Rangers, winning 6-1, dominating every aspect of the game from start to finish. There isn’t much, but let’s discuss what we can take away from this game.
Christian Kirsch Deserved Better From the Rangers
Christian Kirsch came into this game with an outstanding .923 save percentage. However, that took a hit after allowing five goals on 20 shots. Jason Schaubel came in to take over after the fifth goal, and while head coach Jussi Ahokas could have made the switch to find a spark, I can’t place any of the blame for the loss on Kirsch’s shoulders.
The first goal the Knights scored came on the power play. For me, that eliminates any fault on the goalie right away. But, even more so, the Rangers gave Logan Hawery all the time in the world to load up a shot from the slot to open the scoring.
The second came on a shot from the point from Jullian Brown. This one, you could definitely make the case that Kirsch should have had. But it was a perfectly located shot to the top right corner through some traffic. To me, it was more of a great shot, rather than Kirsch letting an easy one past him.
The third came on a two-on-one that resulted in a chance for Sam O’Reilly all alone right in front of Kirsch. He made the initial save, but struggled to control the puck, and it dropped in his own net. Another one he could have had, but it came on a chance that should never be given up.
The fourth came when the Rangers left Ben Wilmott wide open in the slot, another chance the Knights or any other team would score on more often than not. This was similar to the fifth, where Kaeden Hawkins could have had a coffee before roofing the puck over Kirsch’s shoulder on the doorstep.
Sure, there may have been a couple that Kirsch would like back, but he made multiple massive saves in the first period to keep the Rangers in the game while the rest of them were napping. It was an all-around poor defensive performance.
Nothing Positive to Take Away From a 6-1 Loss
In his postgame interview with Sean Fufaro, the Kitchener Rangers’ host for Rogers TV, Ahokas was asked what had gone wrong in the Rangers’ loss to the Knights. He attributed the loss to “defensive details” and went on to say the Rangers made “A lot of defensive mistakes, where they scored on high percentage [chances].”
Following this, the coach was asked if there was anything positive to take away, to which he said, “Not really…when you lose 6-1,” but added, “The only good thing is we get to play them on Sunday again.”
Fufaro followed up by asking what needs to change on Sunday in the Rangers’ next matchup with the Knights. Ahokas responded by saying, “We have to score more, you want a chance to win, but defensively we have to be way better.”
Bad Habits Forming Early
It’s obviously not the time to go scorched earth; the Rangers are not even a sixth of the way through their season, but the trends are starting to become concerning.
They have demonstrated how dominant they can be. See the four unanswered goals to come back and beat the Brantford Bulldogs, their four-goal third period against the Erie Otters, or their five-goal second period against the Guelph Storm.
Related: 3 Takeaways From Kitchener Rangers’ Explosive Victory Over Guelph Storm
This obviously can be the standard for every period, but there needs to be some middle ground, as they have been held to under five shots in a period in five different games, and have now given up three unanswered goals in five of their first 10 games.
When you cannot put together a full 60 minutes, championship-caliber teams will take advantage of that. Look around the league. The Windsor Spitfires have a plus-27 goal differential, the Bulldogs are plus-26, and the Owen Sound Attack are plus-19. Right now, the Rangers are plus-2.
These are the teams the Rangers are expected to compete with deep in the playoffs. While it’s something they can do on any given night, the problem is they are having too many inconsistent, lacklustre performances to even put them in the conversation with these top teams right now.
While I fully believe the Rangers will be in this conversation at the end of the season, they need to start executing a game plan for 60 minutes.
We’ll see if they can find something against the London Knights again on Sunday and turn that into a win streak with four straight games against teams with losing records following rivalry week.
