Petry: Rate increases

MONTREAL - To say that things were slightly different for defenseman Jeff Petry this season would be a serious understatement. Perhaps the understatement of the year.

After playing last year on a variety of second pairings with partners such as Andrei Markov, Nathan Beaulieu, and Alexei Emelin, Petry was thrust into a much larger role on the back end after Shea Weber suffered a foot injury early on in 2017-18.
With the defensive corps revamped and missing various pieces due to injury, Petry had some big shoes - er, skates - to fill. And by his own admission, the transition didn't go all that smoothly at first.
"It was definitely ups and downs throughout the course of the year. Looking back in September, I don't think I started the way I wanted to," confided Petry, who recorded a minus-11 differential in the first 21 games of the season, before Weber was on the shelf for the first time in mid-November. "I think my game improved throughout the year, and there are definitely things I need to work on and continue to focus on. One of those is my defensive game."

His defensive game wasn't all lemons, however. After registering 19 takeaways in 80 games last season (.24/GP), Petry notched eight in those first 21 (.38/GP), a 58% jump. He demonstrated an almost identical increase in blocked shots per game in that span as well, and his 60 hits were tops among Montreal skaters.
Those numbers would be a starting point for the 30-year-old rearguard, a foundation on which he'd have no choice but to build after Weber's nagging foot problems forced him out of action - this time for good - in mid-December.
As the days wore on following the Weber news, Petry grew into his newfound role as the team's most relied-upon defenseman and demonstrated his willingness to fill the void. In the 49 games the Canadiens played after they lost Weber's services for good, Petry averaged a team-leading 24:01 of ice time per outing. He averaged 3:11 of power play time in that period - nearly double the 1:46 he recorded last season - and upped his ice time in short-handed situations by 29% compared to the year before.

He also had an extra little addition to his sweater later in the season - an alternate captain's 'A' - in recognition of his veteran presence helping to hold together an injury-depleted roster navigating rough seas.
Handling the extra load may have been difficult at times, but the Ann Arbor, MI native - whose shooting percentage also shot up an even two points this season - is confident he's the better for it.
"Every team deals with [injuries]. The length of time we had guys missing had a part to do with it. For me, I've never played as much on the power play like I did this year. Learning from that and being able to use that moving forward is beneficial," explained Petry, whose career-high points totals (12G, 30A) represented a 50% increase over his 28 points last year, and include a tripling of his power-play production (6G, 17A) from the previous campaign. "It was definitely an adjustment for my game, playing more minutes, playing more against those top lines. There was definitely an adjustment. It's definitely something I'll learn from and use as motivation over the summer to get back and help this team turn around."

If Petry plans on spending his summer working on his consistency and his defensive game, he noted he'll have to begin with some fine-tuning between the ears.
"One thing I know I need [is] to be mentally tougher. There are times where I'll make a mistake and it'll cause me to make one, two more, just for the fact of not forgetting about the mistake. It's a high-speed game and mistakes are going to happen; the best players in the League make mistakes," concluded the eight-year NHL veteran. "I just need to focus on pushing those mistakes aside and focusing on the next shift, the next play, and not make the mistake that's going to cause me to make another [one]."