It's obvious: the North Bay Battalion love a challenge.
Limitations and expectations don't seem to have a place in the team's lexicon, so it only makes sense that the young group defied those imposed by others this season.
But given that North Bay fans have been treated to some exceptional seasons since the team moved to town, a second round sweep that ended with a 6-0 shutout on home ice last Thursday seemed an anti-climatic finish to a season of staring down adversity.
“Losing is tough enough as it is, but to lose like that is really tough,” Battalion head coach Stan Butler said the day after the team’s loss last week. “The series was pretty simple - their best players were better than ours.
“In the Peterborough series, [Mike] Amadio’s line dominated whoever they played against; it didn’t matter,” he added. “Quite frankly, and it’s no fault of our guys, [Justin] Scott’s line, those three guys, they just owned us. I know they got a couple of late goals from some other guys, but for the most part that line single-handedly beat us.”
Fresh off the disappointing loss, Butler was still focused on the takeaways from the Barrie series and the lessons learned.
“When things don’t go your way, you don’t just quit and shut down,” said Butler. “I thought there were times in the series, like in game three and four, when we got down a couple goals and it really disappointed me because it was almost like they didn’t feel like they could come back.
“That’s something they’ve got to learn from because no matter what the score, it’s junior hockey and you’ve got to find ways,” he added.
Overall though, when reflecting on the obstacles thrown in front of Battalion bus throughout the season, it was easy to see the team simply raised their performance time and time again to meet the franchise’s expectations.
The rhetoric of a rebuild ran rampant early on, with eight mainstays making their OHL debut and the unscripted departure of veterans Zach Bratina and Calvin Gomes.
Not long after, they moved their go-to puck moving defenceman to restore their draft picks and by season’s end veteran Mike Baird chose to take a break from the sport, while depth centreman Brett Hargrave suffered a season-ending injury when they needed his production most.
But through it all, the meteoric rise of a major-junior superstar, the steadfast consistency of their stoic goaltender, the pleasant and unexpected prominence of a soon-to-be NHL drafted rookie defenceman and a myriad of other compelling story lines helped propel the team to a pleasantly surprising third-place finish in the Eastern Conference after the regular season.
In other words, the Battalion-style credo of not focusing on the circumstances they cannot change and centring their attention only on what they could control paid off in spades.
“Did we overachieve this year? Honestly, probably we did,” said Butler. “To go through what they went through this year, I was pretty proud of them. It’s tough - it’s hard to replace those guys, but saying that, the guys stayed with it pretty well.”
However, the team was still inconsistent at times and, as Butler remarked near the end of the season, unpredictable from the very beginning.
“I always believe in life that if you don’t do the little things every day, eventually if catches up with you,” said Butler. “I said all along through the season that there were times I thought we were extremely inconsistent and we didn’t play the way we needed to to be successful.”
Mike Amadio’s transition into one of the league’s best goal scorers saw him understandably earn the attention of other teams’ top defenders.
On the rare occasion that he and his linemates were shut down effectively, the team often lacked the backup attack necessary. In the Barrie series, for example, the only forward to score a goal besides than Amadio and Mathew Santos was Steve Harland.
Nevertheless, it provided for some top of the line entertainment, not the least of which was witnessing a record-setting goalscoring season from Amadio, who notched 50 goals for the first time in franchise history and accounted for nearly 21 per cent of the team’s output.
“We were a one-trick pony pretty much,” said Butler. “There’s no doubt that if you shut down one forward you shut down our team because if he wasn’t scoring the goals, he was definitely setting them up.
“We struggled with secondary scoring through most of the season and once Hargrave went down it really, really hurt us, and we got none in that series at all,” he added. “Some of our forwards, they’ve had a pretty good go here - they’ve been able to rely on other players and Mike Amadio will not be on the bench next year.”
While the loss is still fresh, the temptation to look to the future is met with a promising stable of prospects and young talent, who gained more valuable playoff experience this season.
“To be honest, I think it’s a work-in-progress,” said Butler. “We have a lot of good, solid players, but you don’t win in this league with just solid players - we need guys that need to make big steps next year.
“Brett McKenzie is a prime example,” he added. “He had 25 or 26 goals this year, but he only had two goals on the power play and if he’s going to be a go-to guy on our team, he’s definitely probably going to have to get around 40 goals for us to be good. Zach Poirier, to me, he had a very disappointing year. He got knocked off the draft list and he’s really got to bounce back.”
Witnessing the way the younger Troops, like Justin Brazeau, Kyle Potts and Jacob Ball, progressed and executed their role on a nightly basis is another reason to be optimistic for next season.
“That group of kids - the Brazeau's, the Potts', the Vertiy's, the Kislinger's, Harland - those guys have all got to make that next step and if they make that next step, we’ll be fine,” said the bench boss. “But if they come back and they’re the same players they were this year, we’re going to be in trouble.”
So what did Butler say in his exit-interviews with the returnees who need to carry the torch next season?
“My message to a lot of guys is […] either you get better or get out - it’s pretty simple,” he said bluntly. “You had better show me right early that you’ve made that next step because we want to be a winning organization and we expect to be a winning organization. If they haven’t done the things necessary over the summer, then I’m not afraid to make changes.”
In attempting to fill the offensive void in years to come, the team used nine of their 15 draft picks in this year’s OHL Priority Selection on forwards, with first-round, 13th-overall pick Adam McMaster at the forefront.
Those draftees are now entering a system and a hockey culture that preaches persistence and an unwavering, non-negotiable quest for success.
Despite the team’s unarguable accomplishments in first three years of their North Bay tenure, Butler said the bar remains as high as ever, if not higher.
“You don’t create anything until you win and we haven’t won yet,” Butler said simply. “That’s something that I’m still determined to try to do - win a championship here in North Bay.
“We know it’s not easy,” he added. “We’re up against a lot of big dogs […] but we’re going to continue to work hard here and put competitive teams on the ice."
