It may take until the final game of the regular season or more, to find out if the North Bay Battalion will play playoff hockey this spring.
“We’ve been playing intense, playoff-type here for the last few weeks, and will definitely wrapping up here even more so this weekend,” Battalion coach Ryan Oulahen said Wednesday.
North Bay, which entertains the Oshawa Generals at 7 p.m. tonight to open the final weekend of the schedule, has a two-point lead over Ottawa for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. After facing Oshawa, the Battalion visits the Niagara IceDogs on Friday night and hosts the Sudbury Wolves on Sunday.
The Battalion has a won-lost-extended record of 25-34-6 for 56 points, fifth in the Central Division. Ottawa is fourth in the East Division and ninth in the conference at 22-33-10 for 54 points.
Ottawa also has three games left, all on the road, against Niagara on Thursday night, the Erie Otters on Saturday night and the Brantford Bulldogs on Sunday. Any combination of points earned by North Bay or lost by Ottawa totalling five clinches the last playoff spot for the Battalion.
A tie for the eighth postseason berth is decided on the ice, not through a mathematical exercise, and requires a tiebreaker playoff game.
Home ice is decided by the usual tie-breaking procedure, the first criterion being regulation and overtime wins, ignoring shootout results. The Troops lead 22-20 in the pertinent category.
But Oulahen, believes his squad is already in playoff mode in recent days, especially a 5-2 home-ice win over Ottawa on March 9 and a 5-4 overtime loss Sunday to the visiting Barrie Colts, which would have nothing to do with looking ahead to a tiebreaker.
“It’s in our hands. That’s the way I think our group has to look at it. It’s in our hands. If we take care of business, that’s what we’ve got to do.”
As the first order of business, Oshawa, 39-20-6 for 84 points, third in the East and fourth in the conference, poses a considerable challenge, despite a 3-1 loss to the Troops at the Tribute Communities Centre on Dec. 13.
“This is a really good, really good hockey team,” said Oulahen. “It’s tough because, even though they’re an Eastern Conference team, we’ve only played them once and, when I was looking back at it, they had a lot of guys missing right before Christmas at World Junior time.
“I had to watch a lot of videos this week in the last few days, and they’re an impressive team, obviously built to win this year. They’ve got some high-octane guys.
“It’s just one of those nights where we’re going to have to focus on our game plan and, when we have the style that we want to play or things that we want to do, hopefully, we can make it tough on their offensive players and have a good night tomorrow.”
Oulahen said that Aaron Enright, who went into concussion protocol after taking a hit in a 6-0 road loss to the Kitchener Rangers last Friday night, is “still going to take some time.”