NORTH BAY, ON - Game 68, the final of the North Bay Battalion regular season, had the Troops playoff hopes entirely in their hands as they took on the Sudbury Wolves Sunday afternoon at Boart Longyear Memorial Gardens.
The Battalion handled the Wolves with ease, taking down their Highway 17 rivals 4-0 for a sizable crowd of 3,657 and punching their ticket to the OHL playoffs where they will take on the Eastern Conference first seed Brantford Bulldogs.
“I’m so proud of the guys, obviously this is a huge weekend,” said Battalion Head Coach Ryan Oulahen.
“Ottawa really forced us to have all three games, you don’t know what the outcome of their game is until after today really.”
“We’ve been playing extremely stressful hockey for about four or five weeks. It almost seems like the biggest games we’ve almost played four game sevens already, and those have been our four best games.”
Battalion netminder Mike McIvor had a huge game, stopping all 29 shots he faced and collecting his third shutout of the season. McIvor ends his regular season with 45 games played, a 2.86 goals against average and a .910 save percentage.
McIvor knew the margin for error down the stretch this week was limited.
“We knew if we had a perfect weekend our chances would be good, we just had to take it one game at a time," said McIvor.
“The guys in front of me have been great and I’m just looking forward to the playoffs.”
The Battalion were given their best chance against Sudbury as the Wolves decided to sit and rest Nick DeAngelis, Hudson Chitaroni, Nathan Villeneuve, Quentin Musty, Blake Clayton, Alex Pharand, Donovan McCoy and Kocha Delic in preparation for their playoff series with the Kingston Frontenacs.
North Bay's Marshall McCharles was in the starting lineup for the Wolves. The 18-year-old joined the Wolves after his junior 'A' team, the King Rebellion were eliminated in the Ontario Junior 'A' Hockey League playoffs in the opening round by the Collingwood Blues.
North Bay forward Jacob Therrien and defenceman Aaron Enright were both out with injury today, while Brayden Turley served his one game suspension for a check to the head during Friday's bout against the Niagara IceDogs.
As is tradition with the North Bay Battalion on their last home game of the regular season the Battalion presented their overage players with a painting by esteemed local painter Jack Lockhart. This years graduating players are Zach Wigle, Jacob LeBlanc and Andrew LeBlanc.
North Bay was all over the puck from the get-go, controlling the puck early in the Wolves zone. This would lead to an early power play for the Battalion that would prove to be more dangerous for the Wolves as they would force multiple turnovers on the kill.
The pace of play would soon develop into one with a rush-heavy focus. Both squads would find themselves trading positions on either end of the ice, forcing turnovers and jockeying for the first goal of the game.
Then 11:20 into the period Andrew LeBlanc got the puck to Shamar Moses along the boards who quickly dished it to Captain Ethan Procyszyn (34) who fired a shot into the pads of Finn Marshall, got his own rebound and put the Battalion up 1-0.
Only 41 seconds later Ryder Carey would strip the puck off the stick of Ethan Dean, sent it to Briir Long who shot it into Marshall’s pads and Reyth Smith (5) would get the rebound and the 2-0 goal.
While no more shots would find the back of the net in the period the shot clock would count 19 for North Bay and 7 for Sudbury at the end of 20 minutes.
Sudbury was a much more collected team through the beginning of the second period. Much tighter play along their own blue line and in the neutral zone. The Wolves problem being they could not cleanly enter the Troops territory. North Bay was just playing solid, fundamental hockey. Sticks on the puck, quick clearing of the zone and proficient while transitioning the play.
During four on four action that transition play paid off for the Battalion. Nolan Laird got in the way of a pass at the North Bay blue line and flipped the biscuit up to a racing Bronson Ride (6) who made a quick move and poked the puck five-hole to extend the lead to 3-0.
Aside from some man-advantages being handed out to either team (Shamar Moses and Henry Mews took a particular dislike to each other) there would be no further scoring in the period. The closest being a shot off the post from the Wolves in the final few seconds.
The third period played out almost like a formality. North Bay didn’t have to amp up the pressure as they entered the period up three goals, and Sudbury’s wasn’t up to a level that would beat routinely solid play.
This didn’t mean the Battalion were going to just sit back and not take advantage of a golden scoring chance. Behind the Wolves net Ihnat Pazii won the puck along the boards and flipped it to Ryder Carey then Parker Vaughn (9) to seal this game 4-0.
Final shots on goal 41-29 in favour of the Battalion.
If North Bay had lost this game they still would have advanced as Ottawa lost their final game to the Bulldogs 7-2, also eliminating the 67’s from playoff contention.
North Bay officially kicks off their first round series against the Brantford Bulldogs in Brantford on Friday March 28th for a 7pm puck drop.
Game two of the series will remain in Brantford for a match on Sunday the 30th at 7pm.
The Battalion will then return home to Boart Longyear Memorial Gardens to play games three and four Tuesday April 1st and Thursday April 3rd.