There is plenty to get excited about when it comes to the return of North Bay Battalion hockey in the fall.
After a last place finish in the shortened 2019/20 season, the Troops turned it around dramatically in 2021/22 with a 43-18-3-4 record that resulted in a Central Division title before bowing out in the Eastern Conference Championship to the eventual OHL champs, the Hamilton Bulldogs. It’s easy to see the pieces are in place for the 2022/23 season to be even more special in the Gateway City.
“I think what we were missing last year (19/20) that we earned for ourselves this year was playoff experience,” Troops general manager Adam Dennis explained. “That’s being in the fight, understanding what it’s like against the best in the league and the best players in the league. We had 12 first year players this year, we had 17 guys that played their first OHL games and I think nine of them got some real playoff experience in a real role.
“Now we know what it takes and it’s the age-old story where you need to see what it’s like and you take that in to your summer training, use that as motivation and then you come back stronger ready for that fight and I think we gained that.”
The Battalion will be without the services of Brandon Coe, Mitchell Russell and Grayson Ladd for the upcoming season as they aged out of the league. Between Coe and Russell, that’s 189 points gone from the lineup, plus the veteran leadership of Ladd on the back end. However, for Dennis, while those losses will hurt, there is plenty more to come.
“We’re don’t expect to lose a lot, but of course we’re losing key players in Coe, Russell and Ladd. They will be sorely missed; they were top players in the OHL last year for a reason and we’re going to have to find guys that can make up for that offence and leadership but we feel real confident that there is a good young group of kids that can do that.
“They all showed flashes that they are able to do that and then you throw a guy like Justin Ertel into the mix and he instantly makes up a big chunk of that.”
Ertel was a surprise to be sure, as the former third-round pick in the 2019 OHL Priority Selection left Cornell in the NCAA to come up to the Bay for his 19-year-old season.
“I came here to win,” Ertel said at his media introduction. “I understand that they have a lot of really good pieces that fit for this year and obviously I’m trying to play as big a role as I can and just try to contribute to the team’s success.”
“I think collectively as a group we are four lines deep and any line can score and I think that is going to be the hallmark of next year’s team is our depth,” Dennis added. “For me, that’s how you win in the playoffs. Hockey is one of the best team games out there and you can’t win by yourself and you need lots of players that have been there.
“Not just guys who can score, but guys who can play at both ends and I think our scouting staff has done a good job of identifying and finding the types of players that work in Coach Oulahen’s system and I think the development that happened last year is only going to pay dividends for the next couple of years.”
On the development side, the players have seen team success result in personal success as well, as the Troops saw five players taken at this year’s NHL draft. That total was most in the OHL, and tied for most across the entire CHL.
Another reason that can help the Battalion in the near future is the trades Dennis made around the trade deadline to bolster last year’s team. Trades can sometimes seem like you are selling your soul to the devil, especially when you are in “win now” mode like Troops are. For comparison’s sake, the Hamilton Bulldogs, who eliminated the Battalion, made two really significant moves at the deadline in acquiring Mason McTavish and Arbor Xhekaj. Both are really talented players for sure, and helped the team in winning the OHL title, but now comes the flip side. In the two trades with Peterborough and Kitchener, the Bulldogs gave up a combined four second round picks, five third round picks, and two conditional fourth round picks in upcoming OHL Priority Selections. Not to mention, former first round pick in Alex Pharand, and a former second rounder in Jonathan Melee were sent to Peterborough for McTavish as well. However, as mentioned before, this reporter thinks Steve Staios, the general manager of Hamilton, sleeps just well with his championship ring and new banner that will be hung in the First Ontario Centre.
The Troops moves that were made around the same time eyed last season, and this season with their additions. The first move was bringing in Kyle McDonald and Grayson Ladd from the Windsor Spitfires in exchange for Josh Currie, a second, third and conditional fourth round pick. The next was acquiring Nikita Tarasevich from the Sarnia Sting in exchange for an eighth-round pick in the 2022 OHL priority selection. Those two moves resulted in a combined 55 additional points to the Battalion lineup, and while Ladd will be gone, McDonald and Tarasevich will likely be around for the 22/23 season.
“Last year was so unique because, and it’s tough to dial it back to one point of the pandemic, but I certainly remember Christmas and New Year’s and that time of year for sure because of how it tied into the trade deadline,” Dennis remarked. “Our team had a great start, but we were limping at that point of the year with big injuries, the league was paused for the Christmas break, we weren’t sure if we were coming back on time and there were stoppages all over for COVID. At that point all we were hearing was ‘abbreviated season, maybe we’ll get the full one in, maybe a full playoff, so there was a lot going through my head at that time of year.”
“The one thing we wanted to make sure was the group we had, they earned the spot they were in and they were hungry to do something so we wanted to help out that group. We needed secondary scoring, we needed depth and we needed leadership on the blueline, so I felt with those three players it really added to it. Where we felt really happy with that trade was the potential of having a guy like McDonald and Tarasevich as quality 19- and 20-year-old in the OHL and to win you need those guys in your lineup and they showed what they could do for us in the regular season and down the stretch.”
The OHL is often referred to as a “19-year-old” league, meaning that teams that stock up with good 19-year-old players who bring experience and talent, such as Hamilton, tend to do much better in the league than a younger and more inexperienced team. For the Battalion, as Dennis mentioned, thanks to the 2020/21 season being cancelled, the team had 17 players make their OHL debuts. Moving forward, thanks to the experiences gained this year, the team is poised to be a top threat in the league.
“It’s a big compliment to the coaching staff,” Dennis said on the experience and in house options returning. “If you know a guy is going to get better, they’re going to put in the work, that’s something we have stressed as a staff whether it’s through the draft, we want competitive people and coachable kids and we feel with those two things, our staff has done a great job over the past year of feeding the kids appetites. When you have that and you can get one percent better every day, it makes a huge world of a difference.
“That might have been the biggest move of our deadline last year was giving those young 16, 17, and 18-year-old players the room to grow in the second half and get that ice time and get that development. You look at the 16-year-old's and they may have had a combined three or four points by the Christmas break, but a combined 30 or 40 by the season’s end and that’s when the play gets harder. You’re pushing for playoff spots and for those to elevate like that, it’s pretty special. For us, it gives us confidence that the model has been working.”
