Ty Nelson is bringing the Troops home for game six.
The Seattle Kraken prospect's goal at 4:53 of the second overtime period stunned the Oshawa Generals and their fans at the Tribute Communities Centre as it gave the Battalion a 5-4 victory in game five and helped North Bay stave off elimination for the second straight game.
The play was courtesy of game four overtime hero Sandis Vilmanis making a terrific play to skate in the Oshawa zone, circle the net and give the puck up at the near side boards to Nelson who then drove toward the net himself and slid across the top of the crease to find a wide open far side of the net and he planted the puck past Oshawa goaltender Jacob Oster to put the Troops on the bus with another victory in an elimination game.
“That was definitely one of the biggest goals of my career,” says Nelson. “Vilmanis made a nice play coming off the wall. It’s something we’ve been working on, trying to get it going all series and it just happened to work that time.”
Nelson finished his night with four points, including two goals and a +4 rating on the evening, earning first star of the game honours.
The game almost didn’t make it to a second overtime after teams traded chances through the opening six minutes and the Battalion found themselves shorthanded with Captain Liam Arnsby sent to the box for boarding. The Generals got a couple of decent chances to try and end the game, but the North Bay defence got in front of the shots and Goaltender Mike McIvor came up with the necessary saves to kill off the power play. The Generals at one point had six players on the ice during a change while on the power play, but the officials didn’t see it.
The Generals started to pour it on through the middle and latter stages of the extra frame. Lots of great puck movement inside the North Bay zone created multiple chances with the shots just missing wide, or hitting a skate in front of the net and it seemed like the Battalion were playing desperate defensive hockey, with limited chances for their offense to generate anything, and they were outshot 14-7 in the first extra frame.
“The word that would sum it up is relentless,” says Battalion Head Coach Ryan Oulahen. “I thought that first overtime, they were better than us there, but Mikey kept us in it, and gave us a chance. We came out in that second overtime with a little bit more of a jump and we got that great play to finish it off. But our guys were just relentless, especially in that third period to keep clawing back to tie it up.”
The Battalion did that twice in the third with the teams trading five goals combined.
The Battalion took a one-goal lead into the third period and before it was over the Generals struck for three goals, while the Battalion countered for two, ending 60 minutes of regulation tied 4-4.
It started with Luca Marrelli (2) tying the game for the Generals at 3:35 on the power play before Luca D’Amato (3) gave the Generals a 3-2 lead at 6:02.
North Bay tied the game a minute later when Dallas Stars prospect Justin Ertel popped the puck in the net after he grabbed it off the end boards and quickly shifted it under the pads of Oster. The set play was set up by Arnsby winning the defensive zone draw, getting it into the corner where Jacob LeBlanc fed it around the end boards over to Nelson. Nelson fired the puck all the way down the ice perfectly setting up Ertel with the “Hail Mary pass.” It was Etel’s 9th goal of the playoffs, tying the game 3-3 at 7:26.
Oshawa regained the lead at 11:00 minutes, with Luke Torrance burying his fourth of the post-season into a wide-open net, after a scramble play in front had McIvor just out of position.
Only 19 seconds later, North Bay responded thanks to another Ertel and Nelson play. This time it was Ertel getting the apple after Oshawa defender David Bedkowski’s stick snapped at the point inside the North Bay zone, and Ertel jumped all over the loose puck and put on a dazzling display of speed and agility, going all the way into the Oshawa zone, dangling around a few players, then pulling off to Oster’s stick side and feeding the puck across the slot to Nelson (4) who shot glove side for the equalizer at 11:19 and effectively sending the game to overtime.
“I think that just showed how good both teams are,” says Oulahen about the back-and-forth affair in the third period.
“It shows the joy and dedication these guys have in fighting for each other. I can tell they are a tight-knit group over there just like we are. Our guys never get down, they never feel like they are out of the game because they make that push back.”
“You can’t get too high and you can’t get too low in those moments,” says Nelson about the high exchange rate of goals in the third. “We’re just always staying positive, staying evened keeled and having the trust in our group that we can do this.”
Another guy who has had a knack for big moments this season is Anthony Romani who finished with two goals in this contest, his first goals since the first game of the playoffs in which he left early due to a lower body injury. Romani missed 11 games before rejoining the team on Wednesday for game four against Oshawa, but he left game five early, not being seen after the second period.
Oulahen says there is a chance he could play on Sunday in game six and that he showed how dangerous of a player he truly is with his two-goal performance.
“Unbeleivable game by him. He scored 58 goals this year and he does it in all situations. He scores one six inches from the crease and then he scores one with a shot from high in the zone. He can score in so many ways, he’s a big weapon for us.”
The first Romani goal came as the result of a hard-working play by Nelson. A few moments before the goal, Nelson’s stick broke in half when he was slashed inside the Oshawa zone, but there was no call on the play. It may have been a blessing in disguise as his new stick had some points in it. Later on that shift, Nelson got hit up high and taken down as he was coming into the zone, and once again, there was no call on that play, but Nelson got right back up, got into position, received a pass and shot from the point, it was blocked by Oster but the rebound was right there for Romani (2) to bury and the Troops tied the game at 13:15.
Romani wasn’t done there. Just over five minutes later, he struck again for his third of the post-season and second of the game at 18:53. Romani brought the puck out from the far side corner and was skating toward the blue line before throwing a no-look shot on net and it caught Oster by surprise, giving the Battalion a 2-1 lead which they would carry over to the third period.
While there were no goals in the first period, the pace was definitely set in the opening twenty minutes.
About six and a half minutes in the Generals got the first chance of the game with Beckett Sennecke showing off his tremendous puck handling skills by stick handling around the Battalion defence and sending a backhanded shot over the shoulder of McIvor, but the puck hit the crossbar, denying Sennecke of what would’ve been his 11th goal of the post-season.
Everybody was getting a chance on the net in the middle portion of the frame.
Vilmanis got the puck off a giveaway inside the Oshawa zone and went to the net, but his shot went wide. Oshawa dumped the puck out, and as Battalion defenceman Paul Christopoulos came out from behind his own net, he was tripped in front of the goal, giving Sennecke another golden opportunity, but McIvor came up with another save.
North Bay got the puck out on a stretch pass to Wakely who went one-on-one into the Oshawa zone, before pulling up at the top of the circle and sending a shot wide of the net. The ricochet went off the backboards right to the stick of Wyatt Kennedy on the far side, but Kennedy’s rebound chance also missed the mark.
The ensuing counterattack sent the Generals in on a late 2-on-1 rush and with a pass fed across to the far side, McIvor made a diving stop going post-to-post to keep the game scoreless.
Near the end of the first, the Generals were gifted a power play. With Battalion forward Brice Cook chasing the puck behind the Generals net, the goaltender came out of his net to play the puck, at the same time a defender was in the area, Cook ran into the defender seemingly choosing the lesser of two evils of knocking down the goaltender or the defensive player, but still got called for a “cross checking” nonetheless at 18:07. The Troops managed to get out of the period unscathed.
It was a weird goal to open the scoring in this game. Oshawa defenceman Lucas Rodriguez (1) threw the puck on net from the North Bay blue line and it went up high and then came down just behind the back of Battalion goaltender Mike McIvor, giving Oshawa their first lead of the game 1-0 at 2:44 of the second period.
Off the ensuing faceoff, Ertel went into the zone on a breakaway with three Generals players trailing him. Ertel used a couple of head fakes before breaking in, to his left side and trying to beat the goaltender's five-hole, but the puck rolled off his stick allowing Oster to make the stop.
Shortly after, North Bay’s Owen Van Steensel was called for a penalty for basically checking too hard. He came off the bench and hit Sennecke in the neutral zone, taking down the 6’3” forward. Sennecke had the puck and had his head down, and Van Steensel listed at 5’10” got his shoulder down and buried it into the chest of Sennecke, but the officials deemed he had made contact with Sennecke’s head. With that knowledge, they sent Van Steensel to the box for two minutes, but the Battalion managed to kill of the penalty.
In fact, they might’ve had the best scoring chance within those two minutes as Cook had a similar opportunity to that of Ertel, the only difference was his breakaway came while the team was shorthanded. He broke in on the near side, drove to the net and was stopped on a shot in close.
The Generals went 1/4 on their power play chances while the Battalion weren’t given a single power play.
The Troops still managed to out shoot the Generals 47-45 despite a lack of power play time. McIvor stopped 41 shots in the contest, which ties his career high, while Oshawa’s Oster countered with 42 saves.
The quest for the Bobby Orr trophy now continues for the top two teams in Eastern Conference with game six scheduled for Sunday afternoon (2 p.m.) at Memorial Gardens in North Bay as the Battalion will look to keep their momentum going, with back-to-back wins.
“I give our guys so much credit. They are fighting for their lives right now, they don’t want to go home, they want to keep pushing this. It was a pretty entertaining hockey game. It’s pretty fun to be on the bench and coach these guys,” says Oulahen, who will have at least one more game with this group, and maybe more as they will look to play past Sunday, with the goal trying to force a game seven back in Oshawa.
