It's a game of Incze's

It was a clash of eighth place teams on Thursday night as the East’s eight North Bay, took on the West’s eight in Windsor.

The Spitfires came out victorious in this meeting, doubling up the Battalion 4-2.

“Everyone can see the frustrations as a coaching staff when you see the team that we had in the first period and the team that we had in the third period,” a subdued Adam Dennis said during the post game scrum.

“It’s Jekyll and Hyde and it is something that this group has to learn. We need to start games better, plain and simple.”

As the assistant coach alluded to, the Troops played a strong final 20 minutes of the game, a third period in which they outscored Windsor 2-0, but the Spitfires did their damage in the opening 40, opening a 4-0 lead.

The Spitfires enjoyed goals from Curtis Douglas, Luke Boka, Daniel D’Amico and local product Ben Garagan, who helped the Hamilton Bulldogs to a OHL championship last season before making his way to Windsor in a trade earlier this year.

Before North Bay could break the shutout on Spitfires goaltender Colton Incze, Cameron Peters had the best chance late in the second, but Incze denied him on the goal line.

The lone goal scorer for the Troops was Luke Burghardt, who now has two goals in back to back games for the Battalion. With his goals, you have to go back to North Bay’s second goal against the London Knights on January 20th (Patrick Brown from Zack Malik) to find someone not named Burghardt, Struthers, or Brazeau as the goal scorer. That is a span of three games.

“When this team has been streaking, it has been because we have gotten the second, third and fourth lines adding to the offence. We know what the first line has brought us and we can’t be a one line team.”

Another storyline to follow in this game was the fact that North Bay’s goaltender, Christian Purboo, was facing off against his brother Cole. 

“It’s definitely something, as it got closer, that I was looking forward to,” Cole Purboo explained during the second intermission.

When asked if he had given any of his teammates a scouting report on Christian, he denied it quickly.

“Believe it or not, I didn’t. He’s pretty solid all around. I don’t normally score on him.”

The Troops are back in action tomorrow when they travel to Mississauga to take on the Steelheads.