Erie forces Game 5, Battalion put Gens’ back to wall: OHL post-game questions

The psychology of 3-0 series deficits is the topic du jour. Erie began the long climb back thanks in large part to Toronto Maple Leafs signing Connor Brown's line coming alive. An An international border and a few hundred clicks away, Captain Teal himself, Barclay Goodrow, buried a pair in front of a sellout crowd to North Bay as the Battalion put Oshawa in the most perilous of positions. On with the post-game questions:

Western final

Erie 5 Guelph 2, ENG (Storm lead 3-1 and host Game 5 on Friday) — How much impact did Brown (2G-1A, +2) have on the Otters? Tangibly, the captain came through with a go-ahead goal in the first, then carried deep into the Guelph zone to set up a point shot that Dane Fox redirected in to open a 4-2 lead after one. (No one scored again until Erie's empty-netter.) It was an inspirational effort from the OHL's leading scorer.

"He's a guy who steps it up and takes the bull by the horns," Otters goalie Devin Williams said of Brown. "Even when we're down a goal, he kicks it into another level, the next gear. It's really easy to feed off a guy who does that and rally behind him. Credit him for getting the ball rolling."

The Otters also had a players-only meeting before the game. That means the shakeup in their routine worked, since they won.

"It was just talking about having our backs up against the wall," added Williams, who stopped 26-of-28 shots after being pulled after barely two periods' work in Guelph's 7-1 romp on Monday. We have nothing to lose here. It was a good meeting that we had. It rallied us tonight."

Guelph scored in the first 90 seconds for the second game in succession, which might have sucked it into a false sense of security. The Storm were not sharp, with goalie Justin Nichols getting lifted after three goals on 11 shots and Erie's frontline attackers getting way too much space in the neutral zone.

"Erie didn't have 106 points for no reason," Guelph coach Scott Walker said. "We knew they weren't going to roll over and they didn't. We had 30 per cent of our players playing and 70 per cent didn't."

Can the Otters replicate that effort Friday in Guelph, where they are 0-5? Erie is eminently capable, but there might not be the same 'at least save face on home ice' imperative when the clubs reconvene at the Sleeman Centre for a Sportsnet Friday Night Hockey tilt. That said, their game had a certain jauntiness, particularly in how the Otters calmly built a lead, with Connor McDavid getting two primary assists to help open an early lead.

"They kind of reminded me of what I've seen most of the season," Otters coach Kris Knoblauch said of the McDavid-Fox-Brown line, which combined for five points. "I just thought they drove the net, they didn't play on the perimeter. They made good decisions.

"We just have to play hockey," Knoblauch said. "Maybe we were complicating things too much and maybe that was my fault. Players may have been putting too much pressure on themselves because we were playing such a good team. Tonight it was 'nothing to lose' and we just played hard. We have expect Guelph to have a much better game tonight because sometimes when you're up 3-0, you take shortcuts. I know I've had teams do that in those situations."

McDavid deftly poked a puck loose to set up Dylan Strome on the first Otters goal, which put some wind into the trailers' sail.

Ultimately, the Storm can take 'comfortability' in knowing they're unbeaten at home vs. Erie. Guelph not only has not had two losses in a row since October, but also has scored at least four goals all but once when it's coming off a loss. Provided it can re-discover its focus in the defensive zone, it should be fine on Friday.

In Round 2, Guelph responded to a desultory Game 2 loss to win twice on London Knights' ice. In the first round vs. Plymouth, it put seven pucks behind OHL goalie of the year Alex Nedeljkovic after losing Game 3 of the series.

"If at the beginning of the year someone said you'd be up 3-1 coming home in the Western Conference final, you'd take that," Toronto Maple Leafs-signed Storm captain Matt Finn said. "We'd have loved to have swept the series, but it was going to take a lot to sweep and I don't think we played to that level tonight.

Eastern final

North Bay 5 Oshawa 3, ENG (Battalion lead 3-0 and host Game 4 on Wednesday) — Are the Gens too far down to recover? You know the cliché that begins with, "if it wasn't for bad luck." The irony of sniper extraordinaire Michael Dal Colle (2G, -1) having a multi-goal night was that he did despite being snakebit. The Generals hit two crossbars and one post during a first-period power play.

Dal Colle later opened the scoring on a breakaway, but the Battalion were buoyed by the break. Goodrow (2G-2A, +2) factored into goals 28 seconds apart late in the first that put North Bay ahead to stay.

Oshawa's pushback was sporadic, as it mustered only 18 official shots on goal.

"It's not what we expected," Generals coach D.J. Smith said. "We thought maybe Game 2 would be our best game. Losing that game hurt. We didn't feel too bad coming in here. We would have liked to get tonight. We knew we had to get one here. There are probably some guys who are a little bit shocked, but ultimately we just have to win one hockey game and take care of home ice and get it back here for Game 6.

"There's battle there for sure. I don't think it ever goes through anyone's head that we're done ... At 3-0, everyone is expecting North Bay to put us away. The chance of coming back, if you can win one, the other team starts to get a little bit nervous and maybe you get a little bit of puck luck going your way."

In the first round, North Bay was 20 minutes away from being eliminated on home ice in Game 5 vs. the Niagara IceDogs. Since that point, counting the third-period turnaround, it's 10-2 and is one win from going to the OHL final in its first season in the north. Their confidence appears to be contagious.

"All playoff long, all season long our crowd has been our seventh man," overage wing Ben Thomson said. "A lot of these guys haven't played in front of a crowd like this and I can tell from experience [with the Kitchener Rangers] that it's a boost. Tonight was incredible. We feed off that and we enjoy that.

"Everyone has banded together," Thomson added. "We just need to force their hand a bit to finish it off."

In the first round, Oshawa's rival, the Peterborough Petes, beat Kingston to become the fourth OHL team to win a series after falling behind 3-0.

"No one expected Peterborough to come back against a high-flying Kingston team," Dal Colle said. "As funny as it sounds, we're going to have to look to them for inspiration. It's been done before. We gotta do what we gotta do."

In 2010, Smith was an assistant coach in Windsor and Thomson was a Kitchener rookie when the Spitfires came back from 3-0 down to beat the Rangers in the third round. The Spitfires, though, were a powerhouse that arguably enjoyed the run of play in each of the first three games. In the present, what's relevant is that the Generals have not been able to contain the overage Goodrow, who has nine points in the series.

"It's got to be a five-man commitment to defence and you've got to make them play defence. He's a good player who finds way to get open," Smith said of containing Goodrow.

How could playing back-to-back help out the Troops? As it's been noted a million and one times, the Battalion has adapted from toiling in anonymity amid the suburban sprawl of Brampton to a fishbowl existence up in North Bay, one of the OHL's smallest markets with a population of 55,000.

Words probably cannot do justice to the brewing euphoria. The city lacked an OHL team for 12 seasons and the old Centennials' final years were mostly marked by mediocrity following their last J. Ross Robertson Cup title in 1994. The current team's run is a generational event. For the players, though, that adulation can be a double-edged sword, the dreaded distraction. Having to go right back to work, it would stand to reason, might work to North Bay's benefit.

"With leadership like Ben and Barclay Goodrow and Matt MacLeod and Marcus McIvor, their job is to make sure the guys are ready and realize we have a tough job ahead of us," Battalion coach Stan Butler said. "You look at Erie, they played a great game tonight and that series is 3-1 now.

"What I can do is control my emotions, and pass that on to the team," Butler added. "I can't be concerned about how people feel at Burger World or Average Joe's or Cecil's. I have to worry about our team. Oshawa is a great organization, D.J. Smith was coach of the year for a reason, Scott Laughton was captain of Team Canada and they get [defensive leader] Josh Brown back tomorrow [after the defenceman missed Tuesday's game with a one-game ban for slew-footing]. But we still have to go hard here to get that fourth one.

"This is a great hockey town. It deserves to have an OHL team and the people in town are showing it day in, day out. I know our players. The reason they want to keep going is because of our seventh man."

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