If there was ever a time to get hot it would be now as the North Bay Battalion have pulled together three straight wins, the latest a 7-4 defeat of the Mississauga Steelheads.
On Friday night at the Paramount Fine Food Centre, the Troops used a four goal second period to build what should’ve been a comfortable lead, but almost needed two more in the third to solidify the win.
“It was tight early, but all of a sudden we broke out,” says Battalion Assistant Coach Scott Wray.
“We played really well for two periods, and then it got out of hand and we got into some penalty trouble. And [Mississauga] are really lethal on their power play.”
In fact the only goals Mississauga scored came on the man advantage against Christian Purboo, who was making his first start of the season against the Steelheads. At five on five and with the extra man, the Battalion were the better team. It’s the first time they have won three straight games since January 6th-12th.
It brings North Bay’s record to 30-32-3-2 on the year, and that 30 win mark was something Wray says the team was trying to get to as the season was winding down. But it’s not the only achievement the team was looking at towards the end of the season, “we wanted to solidify seventh place and we did that today. We wanted to get more than 30 wins, but hit 30 and that’s still an accomplishment. It was nice to see Matthew Struthers get his 30th goal tonight, one night after Brazeau gets his 60th, and Brad Chenier got a couple to get him to 29, so it would be nice if he finished with 30. A lot of little milestones for our guys.”
It was Brad Chenier who got the Troops a lead they would not relinquish when he scored at 5:35 on the power play.
Chenier says tipped in a pass from Brazeau on a three-on-one break into the zone that was started by Struthers forcing a turn over in the neutral zone.
The goal made it 2-1 after Luke Burghardt scored his ninth of the year at 14:25 in the first to tie the game. One of three power play goals the Troops would score on the night.
Shortly after the goal, Burghardt was ejected from the game after being given a match penalty for a slew foot.
But the Troops soldiered on without him and ten minutes after the Chenier goal, Brandon Coe (16) scored on the power play at 15:13.
Luke Moncada (8) put them ahead 4-1 at 18:12 and Chenier netted his second of the period at 19:22.
“Brazeau did the work on the second goal and Matt and Brazeau helped me out on the first, right on the tape and went back door, they make it easy for me,” said Chenier.
The Steelheads made a goaltending change to start the third period, but the first two Battalion shots ended up past Joe Ranger.
Struthers (30) put North Bay ahead 6-1 at 3:28 and 12 seconds later Coe (17) scored his second of the game.
Up by six goals, the Steelheads tried to retaliate and the two teams got into some rough play, resulting in a five-on-three for Mississauga.
Adam Varga (5) and Keean Washkurak (16) took the opportunities on the resulting man advantages to get the Steelheads to within four at 7:58 and 8:07.
Another power play near the end of the game gave Varga (6) his second goal of the night at 17:09 to round out the scoring as the Steelheads went 4/6 on the power play and the Troops were 3/4 on their chances.
With one game remaining in the regular season, Wray says the team is playing the way they need to as they head into the post-season. He says “we’re playing good hockey right now and we’re getting good goaltending and for the most part, our special teams have been firing pretty well right now. And let’s not forget we’ve played a lot of hockey in the last two weeks, so it will be nice to get a little rest tomorrow, and we play Sunday but we have to be smart about getting our rest and being prepared for whoever we have next week.”
They will have whoever wins the Central Division championship, which is still up for grabs between the Niagara IceDogs and the Sudbury Wolves. The win over Mississauga secures 7th place in the Eastern Conference. The IceDogs will be at Memorial Gardens on Sunday, a game which features the top two scorers in the league of Niagara’s Jason Robertson and North Bay’s Justin Brazeau who will head in to the game with 110 points each.
Knowing it will be a division opponent doesn’t mean a whole lot to the team or the coaching staff.
“I think you don’t want to pick your poison," admitted Wray.
"You don’t hope for a certain matchup, because when you get that matchup you don’t want to wake a sleeping giant. We’re going to go in as the underdog, we know that, and I think our team will relish that role. I think we’ll thrive off that role too.
“I think a lot of guys in that room learned from last year too in losing that triple over time game to Kingston, we thought that was going to be a good matchup for us and we only played five games," continued Wray.
"I think a lot of guys learned what playoffs was about, missing the playoffs the year before that and we had a young group in the playoffs last year and now that young group has taken that extra leap with this year and that’s going to be vital to our success this year.”
