Peterborough Petes out to end playoff drought: OHL Burning Questions

With the OHL season beginning next week, BTN taking an early look at each team in reverse order of last season's standings.

Peterborough Petes

In 2011-12 — 27-34-3-4, 61 points; ninth, Eastern Conference.

Final Dynamic Dozen ranking — 18th OHL, 49th CHL.

Drafted — D Slater Koekkoek (Tampa Bay Lightning, first round), C Alan Quine (Detroit Red Wings, third), D Clark Seymour (Pittsburgh Penguins, fifth), D Peter Ceresnak (New York Rangers, sixth), RW Derek Mathers (Philadelphia Flyers, seventh).

Draft watch* — LW Greg Betzold, RW Stephen Nosad and Ds Trevor Murphy and Steven Varga; sophomore RW Nick Ritchie's late birthday puts him in the 2014 NHL draft class.

1. What will win out, leaning on the overages for offence or bringing along the underclassmen, the 16- and 17-year-olds?

Having one of the league's most productive overages, 41-goal man Andrew Yogan, last season was not enough for the Petes to squeak into the playoffs. Since major junior teams are businesses which trade in the currency of wins and losses more than how many players are drafted by NHL teams, that increased the pressure on third-year GM Dave Reid and coach Mike Pelino to post better results. It will be a balancing act, to say the least. Reid did restock his top six up front with June trades for two overages, first adding centre Brett Findlay (56 points in Sault Ste. Marie last season) and then acquiring left wing Francis Ménard (60 points for Guelph). At the very least, the Petes now have a modicum of proven scoring to go along with 30-goal scorer Quine. That gives them a few months to decide if the future is now or can be deferred another year until the 1995-born cohort — Betzold, Nosad, Ritchie, Murphy, Varga and Finnish rookie Jonatan Tanus — is closer to hitting its stride.

The Petes earned only 282 power plays last season, fifth-fewest in a 20-team league. That might speak to paucity of pugnacity up front beyond Mathers and the 6-foot-2, 218-pound Ritchie.

2. How important is it to have Koekkoek play a full season?

The Petes' new captain was injured one of his first junior games since having shoulder surgery last winter. It's not believed to be a serious injury, but it revives the memory that the Petes were humming along half-decently before their Mountain man had his season cut short at the end of November. The Petes had a .596 point percentage before Koekkoek tore the labrum in his left shoulder. They played .357 hockey for the duration after Koekkoek's injury and the early-January ends to NHL first-rounders Austin Watson's and Matt Puempel's days in maroon and white. Koekkoek, a 30-minute-a-night defender at his peak, means that much to the Petes. His presence could be very handy on the penalty kill, where Peterborough was a league-worst 76.3 per cent despite having shot blocker nonpareil Watson for half the year.

3. Is there any excuse for missing the playoffs again?

The convenient cliché is that a team cannot be mediocre three years in a row, since junior hockey fans are only conditioned to be patient with rebuilding for a season or two. The Petes, in all charitableness, have been snake-bit for the past several seasons with regard to frontline players going down with major injuries — Koekkoek and Puempel last season, Puempel and Seymour in 2010-11 and Watson, Ryan Spooner and Jack Walchessen in the span of a single day in '09-10.

The potential for improvement is there, particularly with Ritchie, Nosad and Trevor Murphy, who might not be known as the OHL's "other Murphy" by next March. It hasn't crystallized into a W through four preseason games, but it's early.

(* First-time eligible players)

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Contact him at neatesager@yahoo.ca and follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.