Graduate Peroff backs Battalion
NORTH BAY, Ont. – Ken Peroff has connections to both cities and one club represented in the Ontario Hockey League Championship Series, and there’s no doubt where he’s throwing his support.
The North Bay Battalion, in its first season in the Gateway City, meets the Guelph Storm, which hosts the first two games in the best-of-seven series at 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday.
A longtime resident of Astorville, defenceman Peroff played four seasons with the Battalion when the franchise was based in Brampton. After completing his OHL career, Peroff spent four years at the University of Guelph, where he was named a second-team Canadian Interuniversity Sport All-Canadian after his final season wrapped up in February.
“As a guy that’s had hockey in his life forever, you cheer for the teams you used to play for and you cheer for the teams from your home town,” Peroff told baytoday.ca. “It’s pretty ironic how the team I used to play for is now in my home town. It makes it easy.”
Peroff, 24, said he was happy for Stan Butler, director of hockey operations and head coach of the Battalion since its inception, “just for the influence he’s had on my career, but also to see him have that influence on other players.”
“Clearly he’s doing something right there in North Bay.”
Peroff was with the Battalion when it went to the OHL final for the first time in its history in 2009, where it was defeated in five games by the Windsor Spitfires, who went on to win the first of two consecutive Memorial Cup titles.
This year the Battalion, which finished atop the Central Division, earned its berth in the final by eliminating the Niagara IceDogs in seven games and the Barrie Colts in six before capturing the Eastern Conference crown in a sweep of the Oshawa Generals.
“For North Bay to have an OHL team and for them to be doing well with it, and to be doing well with the same kind of management that I’m familiar with from when I was in Brampton, I’m really pulling for them,” said Peroff.
As the only North Bay-area player to skate for the Battalion at Brampton, Peroff remembered how important the North Bay Centennials were to the community before the franchise moved to Saginaw, Mich., in 2002.
“It was huge in town,” he said shortly after the Troops’ move north was announced in November, 2012. “The crowds might not have been great, but you heard about the Centennials all the time. North Bay is the same kind of place as Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie. They love hockey and they need something to watch. There’ll be a lot of support for an OHL team.
“I’d go to two or three games a season. My parents were both born and raised in Sudbury, so we’d go when the Wolves came to town. I remember going to see Jason Spezza when he came to town with the Spitfires.”
The Battalion has attracted raucous crowds to its home playoff dates, with the renovated Memorial Gardens proving to be a difficult venue for opposing teams. The Battalion, which recorded 21 home wins in 34 regular-season games, boasts a won-lost record of 8-1 at home in the playoffs.
“It’s different from pretty much every other rink in the OHL,” noted Peroff. “It has a ton of character. It’s well lit and it can get really loud. I played all my high school games there and played inline hockey there in the summer.”
The Battalion chose Peroff in the seventh round of the 2005 OHL Priority Selection from the West Ferris Trojans after Oshawa added his name to the list of eligible players. He played one season for the junior A North Bay Skyhawks before enlisting with the Troops for the 2006-07 campaign.
Peroff played 240 games with Brampton in a major junior career that ended in 2009-10. He scored 15 goals and earned 60 assists for 75 points and added 14 points, including three goals, in 39 playoff games.
“We had all sorts of different teams during my time there, and I had lots of different roles. I went from a guy who didn’t play much or would be a scratch to a guy who was relied on heavily by the end of my time.”
Peroff had 15 goals and 46 assists for 61 points in 109 games with the Guelph Gryphons, with whom he was a two-time Ontario University Athletic Association first-team All-Star.
After completing work at Guelph toward a geography degree, he made the jump to professional hockey in March when he joined the Toledo Walleye of the ECHL, skating in 16 games and collecting one goal and one assist.
