Troops, Bulldogs set to meet
NORTH BAY, Ont. — The North Bay Battalion gets back into Ontario Hockey League playoff action when it visits the Brantford Bulldogs to open a best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinal series at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Fifth-place North Bay advanced to meet first-place Brantford with a six-game ouster of the fourth-place Peterborough Petes, while the Bulldogs, who won the Hamilton Spectator Trophy for finishing with the most points in the OHL’s regular season, swept the eighth-place Sudbury Wolves in four games.
The Battalion and Bulldogs split four season meetings, with each winning twice on home ice. Brantford prevailed 7-2 on Dec. 6 and 6-5 on March 20, while North Bay won 5-4 in overtime Jan. 22 and 3-2 in overtime March 12.
“Not a lot, I don’t think, is going to change for us,” Battalion coach Ryan Oulahen said Tuesday. “There’s a lot of good things we went through in that Peterborough series that prepared us for meeting this challenge.”
The Peterborough series saw the Battalion win one of three overtime games, that being the clincher Saturday night when Parker Vaughan scored his second goal of the game at 17:09 of the second extra period to electrify a season-high 3,728 in attendance.
“That crowd was insane,” noted Oulahen. “I don’t know if there’s many moments that beat that. For me, I’ve been here for a long time and all the major playoff runs since 2013, and that right there was top three for sure in terms of this building popping, the crowd going crazy, and we’re going to need them here this round to match up with the Brantford crowd as well, and I think even excel and exceed it here and really give us an edge here and be the true 7th Man.”
Oulahen suggested that the Troops will require continued commitment to emotional control against the Bulldogs, who defeated North Bay in five games in a conference quarterfinal last year.
“I talked going into that first round about being even-keeled, just because I had a funny feeling there were going to be so many moments that we were going to have to keep our emotions in check, whether it was losing an overtime game, whether it was dealing with a call that we didn’t love.
“Whatever the case was, we really did a good job doing that, so I’m going to stick with that theme here, that we’re going into a very hostile building and what we just went through prepared us for this and now we’ve really got to keep our emotions in check even more going into this series.”
North Bay outscored Peterborough 17-11, while Brantford had an 18-10 edge in goals against the Wolves, with one game at Sudbury going to overtime. The Troops allowed the Petes one power-play goal in 27 opportunities, that coming in Game 3 on one of two shots against Jack Lisson, who entered overtime cold after starting goaltender Mike McIvor was issued a match penalty.
“They’ve got so many offensive weapons through their lineup that we’ve got to play really sound defensive hockey,” Oulahen said of the Bulldogs, who boast 11 National Hockey League draftees and who scored on 50 percent of their power plays against Sudbury.
“It’s the cliche stuff, but it’s blocking shots at the right time, it’s winning our 50-50 puck battles, it’s having the puck as much as we can in their zone. There are so many fundamental things that we’re going to have to stress in this series.”
Lisson played in all six games against the Petes, posting a 1.71 goals-against average, a .950 save percentage and two shutouts.
“Jack was outstanding,” said Oulahen. “It goes without saying that a lot of those games was Jack keeping us in it. He did an awesome job.”
Said Lisson: “We have tremendous belief within our room, for sure. We know what we’re capable of, so I think it’s just going out there and putting that on ice.”
Kaden Pitre took a tumble behind the Battalion net in the second period of Game 6 and was helped off the ice appearing to favour his left leg.
“I don’t think it’s a serious, serious thing,” said Oulahen. “He’s got some stuff that he’s just got to go through and some tests and whatnot, but he is feeling way better than coming out of the game. Don’t expect him for Game 1.”
The game at Brantford, the first of two at the TD Civic Centre to open the series, can be seen live in North Bay on YourTV Channels 12 and 700.
