The only positive for Stan Butler after Thursday night’s 5-2 loss to the Windsor Spitfires was that he wouldn’t need to see his players for a few hours.
After preaching the need for consistent hard-fought efforts countless times already this season, it was the kind of game that frustrates the North Bay Battalion bench boss after an early lead was erased with a lacklustre effort.
A pair of power play goals paved the Spitfires’ path to victory, with Christian Fischer’s third period marker on the man advantage ultimately proving to be the game-winner.
Five different goal scorers contributed in the well-balanced Spitfire attack, with Cole Carter earning first star honours for his one goal, one assist performance and towering defenceman Logan Stanley pitching in with two assists.
“I just think they taught us how to play hockey the right way tonight,” Butler said simply after the game. “They went out and finished all their checks, they played 200-feet, they backchecked hard, they changed properly, they blocked shots, and they played hockey the way its supposed to be played.
“We played a very undisciplined game,” he added. “We were sloppy, we were lazy, we were quick to criticize other people; it’s just not a style of hockey you can play to have any success.”
For the first time all season, the Troops lost a game after scoring the first goal.
However, they looked the fresher of the two teams early on considering they didn’t have an eight hour bus ride before the game. And it didn’t take long for their top tandem to tally.
Just one day after being named to Team OHL for November’s Canada vs. Russia series, linemates Mike Amadio and Zach Bratina continued their sizzling streak by combining on the first goal of the game four minutes in.
Bratina gained possession of the puck behind the Windsor net and, given as much time and space as he needed, found a lonely Amadio at the right face-off circle to finish off a one-time shot for the one-goal lead.
The Spitfires had moments of offensive zone threats, but the Battalion looked cool and confident in their ability to build a wall in front of goaltender Jake Smith and control the slot area, limiting shots to the outside areas to carry the lead into the second period.
Trying to sustain their opening period pressure perhaps a little bit too hard though, forward Brett McKenzie was given the gate for boarding in the early stages of the second. Just four seconds into the ensuing man advantage, the Spitfires’ dangerous power play got the team on the board after Carter redirected a point shot past Smith to even the score with his first career OHL goal.
From that point, the physical intensity picked up, with the Spitfires consistently lining the Troops’ top line up in their crosshairs. Bratina and linemate Mathew Santos were notably rattled by the visiting antagonists, getting drawn into multiple post-whistle scrums and word wars.
By that point, the energetic jump and urgency that got the Battalion on the board was nowhere to be found in the third, when the Spitfires looked by far the fresher of the two teams.
“I think in the first period we played the right way - we played hard and stuff like that,” said Butler. “But after that, I thought we became very lazy and they stuck with their game and did all the right things and checked from the right side of the puck and blocked shots and got into the shooting lanes; they did all the things you need to do to be successful.”
The dangerous Windsor offence was quick to recognize their lacklustre form too, with forward Aaron Luchuk scoring his third goal in three games by finishing off a confident cycling play down low in the Battalion zone.
Then, on the very next shift, the Spits needed just 34 seconds of a Mike Baird penalty to extend the lead to two, with Fischer netting his fourth of the season on a redirected point shot.
The Troops pushed back into that lead just over a minute later when New Liskeard product Justin Brazeau was credited with his first career major-junior goal by banking in a Zach Poirier rebound.
But a failed Battalion breakout attempt three minutes later left the Spitfires with a two-on-one in close; all left winger Luke Kirwan had to do was sneakily slip the puck under Smith’s pad to regain the two-goal lead.
With the Battalion net empty in a last ditch effort with two minutes left in regulation, Cristiano DiGiacinto fired the final bullet to end the battle in the Spitfires' favour.
“I kept watching [the Spitfires] play and they reminded me of our team a couple of years ago - blocking shots, tracking pucks, working with each other,” said Butler.
“That’s the challenge our group of players has right now: they need to decide what kind of identity they want,” he continued. “The identity that they have right now, as far as I’m concerned, is the identity of laziness, selfishness and basically, if you’re lazy and selfish, you’re going to have results like we had tonight.”
In the end, the Troops went 0-for-5 on the power play, while surrendering two goals on four penalty kills.
Despite the special teams disparity though, Butler said there are bigger problems at play.
“It’s not about whether you’re 0-for-5 on the power play or they’re 2-for-4 on the power play - It’s about creating good positive habits to play the game the right way, and it starts with your best players doing that,” said Butler.
Ontario Hockey League and Canadian Hockey League Player of the Week Bratina was held goalless for the first time in seven games, while the secondary forward scoring woes continued for the Battalion.
“Tonight, our guys who have had some success, instead of realizing the way they’ve had that success […] what they did was try to cut corners here and there,” said Butler.
The home loss adds more emphasis to the Battalion’s forthcoming road trip, which starts Saturday night against the league’s highest scoring team in the London Knights before finishing off in Mississauga against divisional rival Steelheads on Sunday afternoon.
The talented Knights, touted by many to be atop the league come year’s end, are on a three-game winning streak and have only lost one game in regulation all season, while the Steelheads find themselves a point atop the Battalion in the Central Division with a game in hand.
The Troops, on the other hand, slip to 5-5-0-0 through 10 games on the campaign, good enough for third in the division.
“The focus is more of a mental thing,” Butler said of the weekend ahead. “As a group, it’s no different than anything in sport: you’ve got to understand and buy into how you need to play in order to be a successful hockey team and if you don’t do those things, like we didn’t do tonight, then the results are going to be consistently what we saw tonight.”
