The Ottawa 67’s are fortunate they play again Sunday.

There just isn’t enough time for head coach Chris Byrne to conduct a message-sending boot camp before then.

After 60 minutes of seeing the military-style uniforms of the Brampton Battalion outscore, outplay, outwork and outhustle the 67’s on Friday night, the thought had to cross Byrne’s mind.

The Battalion brought the first-place 67’s back to earth with a thud, dropping them to 2-2 on home ice at the Rona Centre with a 3-1 victory before a crowd of 7,184 on Friday night.

The 67’s, who had averaged 4.5 goals per game in the first 10 games of the season, mustered just 18 shots on the Battalion net and were only kept close by the work of Petr Mrazek in Ottawa’s net.

The 67’s start to the game was less impressive than the action scenes in the new movie Score: A Hockey Musical. It was easily their worst period all season.

The 67’s played giveaway and were outshot 15-4, leaving Mrazek to make second, third and fourth saves as his defencemen stood around.

“They jumped on us right from the start and we just weren’t prepared for it,” 67’s veteran Ryan Martindale said. “They came out and took it to us. I don’t know if it was (last Sunday) or what.”

Michael Santini opened the scoring for Brampton with a power-play goal at 6:34, and Ian Watters made it 2-0 at put 18:57.

The goal by Santini was only the fifth the 67’s had given up while killing penalties, easily the lowest total in the league. The Battalion, however, came in with the league’s most potent power-play, converting at slightly better than 26 per cent.

Whatever Byrne had to say to the 67’s during the first intermission didn’t seem to get through, so he tried again during a timeout midway through the second period, when Ottawa was being outshot 20-7.

The only player Byrne wasn’t talking to was Mrazek.

“It was after watching 30 minutes of us not working,” Byrne said. “As coaches, we can handle making mistakes. When the effort is not there, it’s another matter.

“If you do not work hard, you do not get anything.”

The timeout did little to change momentum, however. Just 59 seconds later, Brampton went up by three on a goal by Philip Lane.

The highlight of the second was a spirited fight between the 67’s Dalton Smith and the Battalion’s Alex O’Neill, a product of nearby Mountain with three generations of family and some of the North Grenville District High School student body in attendance.

They also fought in a game at Brampton a week ago.

The 67’s finally got on the scoreboard when rookie Remy Giftopoulos matched his goal total for six games last year by converting a setup by Thomas Nesbitt at 14:48.

That was it for Ottawa, though.

The 67’s played minus veteran defenceman Marc Zanetti, the team leader in plus-minus at plus-10 through