A tough way to ring in the New Year for North Bay.
After an impressive opening 40 minutes against one of the top teams in the league, the Battalion fell behind late in the third and couldn’t mount a comeback, dropping a 5-2 decision to the Kitchener Rangers to close out 2024. It was the first time all-season, in which the Battalion lost a game where they were winning after the second period, that record now at 8-1-0-0, while the Battalion fall to 13-18-3-0 overall on the year, losing six in a row for the first time since January 26-February 9, 2020, when they dropped seven straight contests.
Despite the inability to pick up points over what has been a touch stretch, there are parts of their game where the Battalion look like they are the better team and are ready to break out of their slump. Take for instance a sequence in the later stages of the second period when first-year forward Ryder Carey blocked a shot from overager and Vegas Golden Knights prospect Trent Swick.
“Didn’t feel great, but it gave the team a lot of momentum,” says Carey.
That came with just under 14 minutes left in the second period and the shot went off his shin and kept him down momentarily. He was able to skate off on his own and came back with vengeance. On his very next shift he looked more determined to score than ever as he made a couple of great plays in the offensive zone. First, he had control of the puck on the right side, and he pinched in towards the net, made a spin move, and passed the puck to the far side to get Shamar Moses a good shot on net, which was redirected away. Play continued and Carey circled the zone, got into the slot and got two shots on net, but there was too much traffic in front. Finally, he made a good play up high in the zone to keep the puck in the attacking end, allowing the next line to come on and keep the pressure in the zone. It took the Rangers almost two minutes to get the puck cleared from that onslaught.
“For a young guy, he can really get the bench going,” says Head Coach Ryan Oulahen regarding Carey’s play.
“He helps them find that energy and that whole play was great, you got to see the offensive instincts and the talent he has. He was hanging on to pucks and that allowed us to keep them hemmed in.”
“We just kept working, get the opponents tired and get a good change so the next guys can come on and keep battling,” Carey says, explaining his thought process throughout that sequence.
The Battalion then scored a late goal to get to the locker rooms with a one goal lead. Former Rangers defenseman Jacob LeBlanc won the puck at the near side boards at the top of the zone and made a quick pass over to Moses who slapped home the one-timer to beat Jackson Parsons (21-6-1-0 at 19:31 for a 2-1 North Bay lead. It’s the ninth goal of the season for Moses, who continues to play at just over a point per game pace, with 32 points in 30 games since coming over to the North Bay Battalion in an early season trade.
But the Troops couldn’t keep the momentum moving forward into the final 20 minutes.
A bad turnover to start the third period allowed the Rangers to tie the game 2-2. The Battalion tried to carry the puck out of the zone up the middle but were met by Jack Pridham driving hard on the forecheck, forcing the puck free, gaining possession and sending a pass out in front to a wide-open Trent Swick (16) who buried the puck for his second of the game, 20 seconds into the third.
Pridham (10) was back on the scoresheet later in the period as his shot from the right side just trickled in under the pads of Battalion goaltender Charlie Larocque (3-10-0-0) at 13:29. The Battalion goaltender made a good stop, but just couldn’t completely freeze the puck and it found its way over the line to take a 3-2 lead.
Evan Headrick scored a memorable first OHL goal moments later, when he took a sharp angled shot from the corner that snuck in off the side of Larocque. Headrick was the Rangers first round draft pick this past April, and he was appearing in his first OHL game as he missed a significant amount of time after suffering an injury during the preseason his goal at 14:35 gave the Rangers enough insurance to put the game away.
“I talked to the guys right away and told them that this stretch we’re in reminds me of the season after the COVID,” says Oulahen.
“It was around this time of year, and we were struggling a little bit, we had some injuries, some guys were sick and then all of a sudden, we won an overtime game in early February, and everything clicked. We only lost a couple of games for the rest of the season. I’m not saying were on the verge of that again, but that feels like the kind of mud were in right now and we just have to keep working with it and believing in ourselves and believing that this process is going to work.”
The Battalion have a similar make up to that post-Covid team, with a lot of tantalizing young players making up the core of the roster, getting their feet wet in the OHL for the first time, including Carey.
“I think my play is coming together well as the season moves along,” he says. “We just have to keep rolling and building with this group and get ourselves into that playoff position.”
“We look like a team that could play in waves a lot more today,” says Oulahen. “That sequence in the second period was probably some of the best we’ve had this season in terms of preaching the right things and playing the way we want to play. We have to draw on some of the positives today and I think we’re on the verge of seeing those good results.”
Going into the game the Battalion knew they had a tough task ahead of them. Facing a Kitchener team that is second in the Midwest division and tied for second overall in the league in points – they held them off for large stretches of the game.
The Rangers opened the scoring when Luke Ellinas broke in over the blue line down the left side boards and was covered by two Battalion players, but somehow managed to get a broken pass into the middle of the zone, which found its way to Swick’s stick and Swick swatted the puck towards the net, sending it flying over the glove of Larocque at 3:35.
North Bay tied the game at 8:49 on a power play goal off a snipe by captain Owen Van Steensel. Jack LaBrash was called for boarding at 7:53 and the Troops went to work. They cycled the puck well around the perimeter and made the defense move left to right. Off a shot attempt, Ethan Procyszyn took control of the puck, fed it over to Shamar Moses at the top of the zone on the left side and he moved to the middle, before dropping off a behind-the-back pass to a wide-open Van Steensel, who saw an opening from above the left side circle. Van Steensel ripped the puck towards the net for his 13th goal of the season to make it 1-1.
With time winding down in the first period, Parsons made a huge save on Carey. The first year Battalion forward received a pass coming into the offensive zone and was one on one with the Kitchener netminder. Carey fired a hard shot at Parsons, but he made a good glove save to keep the game tied. Parsons has been on a roll in the last few weeks. He made 32 saves in a 3-2 overtime win in Sudbury against the Wolves on Sunday and was 8-2-0-0 in his last ten played coming into the game.
Tanner Lam (7) scored at 14:57 of the third period to round out the scoring for the Rangers. The Battalion outshot Kitchener 25-23 and went 1 for 5 on the power play and 2 for 2 on the penalty kill.
The Troops will begin the New Year at home when they welcome the Peterborough Petes to Memorial Gardens on Thursday, January 2 2025.
