Mike Amadio, Justin Brazeau and now Anthony Romani.
Those are the three players in the entire history of the Battalion franchise who have scored 50 goals or more in a single season. Romani, the latest to do it with his first period goal on Thursday night in a 4-2 win against the Brantford Bulldogs at Memorial Gardens.
It wasn’t the flashiest goal out of the 50 he has scored this season, but as is often the case, it was the result of his whole line working hard and keeping pressure on the defence and supporting each other.
Dalyn Wakely got control of the puck at the blue line and was surrounded by three Bulldogs players but managed to get it away from that area and fed it over to Owen Van Steensel. Van Steensel moved up to the left side of the net and quickly dished it across the blue paint to Romani who was wide open behind the goaltender Matteo Drobac. Romani then potted the puck into the empty cage and cemented his place in Battalion goal scoring lore.
“It was pretty much a gimme, but I’ll take those, especially after the last couple of games where I hit the post and the crossbar a few times,” says Romani.
“It was a great pass by Owen and it's nice to get that done.”
Both Amadio and Brazeau are now playing in the NHL and Romani says they are guys the coaching staff talks about.
“They are big names around here. The coaches talk about all the great things they did for this organization and its pretty cool to be mentioned with those two guys.”
Romani is also just the third Battalion since the Troops moved to North Bay to score at least 100 points in a single season with Brazeau accomplishing the feat in 2018-19 with 113 points and Brandon Coe getting 101 in 2021-22.
“It’s pretty amazing,” says Head Coach Ryan Oulahen. “It’s very rare to witness a 50-goal scorer and a 100-point guy. In my time I’ve seen it once with Amadio and once with Coe and other than that, I’ve never witnessed anyone accomplish either and I’ve been involved in hockey for a long time as a player and a coach so it’s pretty amazing for him to do that this year, and we still have some games to go.”
Romani’s goal gave the Battalion a 2-0 lead at that point after Van Steensel scored about five minutes earlier. The third year forward came down the ice on the far side, used his speed to get passed the defender and shot high glove side to open the scoring with his 36th of the season.
As impressive as Romani’s season has been, it may be matched by the half-season Sandis Vilmanis has had since coming over to the Battalion in a trade deadline deal that brought the 6’2” right winger over from Sarnia. In the 30 games he played with the Sting this year Vilmanis scored 10 goals and 28 points. In the 25 games he’s suited up with the Troops (including Thursday) Vilmanis has netted 23 goals and scored 31 points, an impressive streak that earned him an entry level contract with the Florida Panthers.
“That was a pretty good trade by General Manager Adam Dennis,” says Oulahen.
Vilmanis’ 23rd of the season came just 35 seconds into the second period when Vilmanis broke down the right side in the neutral zone, drove past the defender and cut across the front of the net before sliding the puck under the stick side pad of Drobac to put the Battalion ahead 3-0.
Cole Brown (14) got the Bulldogs on board near the end of the period.
In the third period, Van Steensel scored his second of the game at 10:38, with Wyatt Kennedy and Wakely picking up the assists with the Battalion regaining the three-goal advantage up 4-1. The assist by Wakely was his team leading 56 helper this season and with that point its another night at the office where all three guys on the top line find themselves on the score sheet. That has happened 36 times this season out of the 63 games the Battalion have played.
“You want to design your lines that contain a few ingredients, and their line has all of the ingredients to perform night in and night out,” says Oulahen.
“You have a centreman that can really distribute the puck and drives the middle of the ice in Wakely. You have a guy that just competes and works extremely hard in straight lines, wins a lot of puck races and keeps the plays alive in Van Steensel. Then you have the guy who has the ultimate hockey IQ in Romani and he’s a guy that can put the puck in the net. You wrap it all up with the fact that they are friends and love competing for each other and that’s why we have something really special.”
The Bulldogs cut the lead in half at 14:03 on Brown’s (15) second goal of the evening. But DiVincentiis (24-9-3-1) stopped the other 16 shots that came his way in the third, while making several big stops in the first two periods to keep his team ahead, turning aside 36 of 38 shots altogether.
“We are so lucky to have him back there,” says Oulahen. “He was excellent.”
The win gives the Battalion their 35th victory of the season and improved to 19-10-2-1 at Memorial Gardens. The win also gives North Bay 78 points to tie them with the Mississauga Steelheads for the division lead. It can’t be understated how big that win was as the Bulldogs have been building momentum down the stretch, picking up some key victories and with the Ottawa 67s gaining a 6-2 win over Barrie as well on Thursday night, a loss for the Battalion would’ve dropped them back to 6th in the Eastern Conference.
Now just four points separates first place Oshawa (81) from Sudbury and Ottawa who are tied at 77 points sitting 5th and 6th in the conference respectively while North Bay jumps ahead of the Wolves.
Oulahen reiterated his message from earlier this week that every point at this stage matters.
“It’s massive to do this in regulation at this time of year. You seem them making the push at the end with the goalie pulled and you really don’t want to give them any points, so to do it in regulation was big.”
They’ll get a day of rest before heading out on their final two game road trip of the season. The Battalion will play the Petes in Peterborough on Saturday, before suiting up against the Frontenacs in Kingston on Sunday. They’ll have just three games remaining following this trip with two at home and one more visit to Mississauga before the season wraps up. There may only be five games left on the schedule but there is still so much that is undecided before the post-season making this a true entertaining sprint to the finish for more than half the teams in the conference.
