Battalion fever ‘unprecedented’ for close-knit North Bay fans

NORTH BAY, Ont. — Anyone who has seen any part of this North Bay Battalion run will have her or his cache of mental snapshots.

A good one, not necessarily the one, was during the series’ first two games down in Guelph, before one of the overtimes.

“We were over in the corner and the teams switched ends for the playoffs,” says Len Baker, a soon-to-be Nipissing University graduate who was at Game 4 on Wednesday having accessorized his jersey with camo face paint, a green wig, green St. Patrick’s Day headband — anything green or gold. “And [captain] Barclay Goodrow, he came down and circled behind the net that the Guelph goalie was already in and he smiled and skated by us.

“That was a special moment,” says Baker, who was in the crowd 20 years ago when the North Bay Centennials won the the OHL title. “Stuff like that, it makes us feel appreciated.”

The bond between a hockey town and its beloveds goes two ways. The Battalion players seldom fail to mention how much they fed off their home crowd in the Memorial Gardens, which might have seen in its final game of this season on Wednesday night with the Guelph Storm’s rout that opened a 3-1 series lead. But the energy has also flowed back into town, and judging from an unscientific parking-lot census — 20-somethings and retirees tailgating side by side while parents led school-aged girls and boys toward the doors — it's galvanized the city.

“There's so much excitement you can’t help but get wrapped up in it,” says Katina Matheson, a United Way worker who spent part of her childhood in North Bay when her father was stationed nearby with the Canadian Armed Forces.

“It’s amazing. You have the young people, you see the parents with the little toddlers in their Battalion gear and you see the more experienced people who’ve lived here a long time and they’re just stoked. They show up to cheer during warmups.

“It sort of started slowly,” Matheson adds. “First there were the renovations to the arena that weren’t completely finished until after the season started. Then they made a couple of trades and got some fresh blood. And after Christmas, they just kept winning and winning at home. You read it in the paper every week that our home record has been unreal.

“It built upon itself with every series,” Matheson adds. “It’s just reached this more broader scale and put North Bay in a more positive light.”

‘Unprecedented’

Words probably don’t do justice to the scene inside the 55-year-old Memorial Gardens, which received a $16-million facelift in order to be OHL-pretty. The rink was lengthened, luxury boxes were added, new seats were installed and the two levels of club seating were put in behind the north end goal. It’s the perfect venue for a happening.

"It's hockey season meeting patio season," quipped Matheson's friend, 27-year-old Jenna Marshall, who travelled from Huntsville, Ont., for the game.

The OHL is mostly a weekend league, but the vibe on Tuesday resembled a weekend game at the Memorial Cup when the host team has a chance to win it all.

“It’s unprecedented to have 4,000 in North Bay on a Tuesday night,” says Chris Dawson, the sports editor of baytoday.ca, who was chairman of the city’s winning effort in the 2007 Kraft Hockeyville contest. “We have a summer festival here, but something that brings 4,000 people out in North Bay just doesn’t happen.”

The city’s passion for pucks never ebbed while the OHL was gone. The North Bay Skyhawks accounted for a third of attendance in the entire Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League at one point. The OUA’s Nipissing Lakers also averaged more than 2,000 fans, which is 2-3 times the size of the typical university hockey turnout. There was interest in 2007 in making a play for the Mississauga IceDogs, who ultimately were bought and moved to St. Catharines.

The OHL straddles the divide between having accessible athletes who one might see playing on Hockey Night in Canada in the not too distant future.

“It’s brought hockey life back to North Bay,” Baker says. “You see it with the tailgate party, all the changes to the Memorial Gardens, the sellouts with more than 4,000 people.”

Jeff Turl, a former CTV reporter who also writes for BayToday, says North Bay “took such a bruising when the Centennials left that it was like a 10-year hangover.” Now that the Battalion have put down roots, there’s a sense of tradition mashing up with modernity like two players colliding in the corner.

'Share in what I knew grewing up'

Battalion fan Jennifer Chatelaine has a 10-year-old son, Austin, who has autism. She relates that coach Stan Butler has taken an interest in Austin, bringing him into the dressing room to meet the players.

“He is a huge Battalion fan, and it’s just so special that he’s able to share in what I knew growing up while I was cheering for the Centennials,” Chatelaine says.

The Centennials’ decline phase hit the city hard. Not unlike the Montreal Expos in their latter years, people stayed away since it hurt too much to watch a team that was a shell of bygone felt. Mitch Thomas, manager at the Skater’s Edge Source For Sports store around the corner from the Gardens, says “people would only go to try and win the 50/50.”

The pots weren’t anywhere near as big as Tuesday’s $7,200.

“We had to buy more jerseys off of the team,” says Thomas, whose parents Debbie and Jim were Cents season-ticket holders. “We ordered in extra hoodies. Sold those out. Sold out two kinds of hats. Two kinds of t-shirts.

“You see businesses that have no real tie-in to hockey with ‘Go Troops Go’ out front,” Thomas notes. “It’s all about the Battalion.”

The Battalion sold 2,511 season tickets. If words mean anything, could up that total before next season. The team's quickly become an anchor in a city of 64,000 that's three hours from Toronto.

“They fit right into the community," Chatelaine says. “It’s been so great. At the same time it’s a little bittersweet knowing that it’s coming to the end of the season we’ll be losing a lot of our players, the overages.”

That is the life cycle of junior hockey. There will always be a next game, with new young men to project hope toward. North Bay didn't have that for the longest time.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.