Oshawa Generals 'sneak out' clinching win over North Bay: OHL post-game questions

Styles make fights, and the final will pit The Connor McDavid Show with all its blue, red and orange-hued pyrotechnics against the Oshawa Generals' patient, defensive structure.

The Generals and goalie Ken Appleby closed out the North Bay Battalion in the Eastern final with a 2-1 Game 6 road win on Sunday. The Generals, who trailed in the series after three games and were behind midway through Game 4, took control with an early Hunter Smith goal and repelled a late comeback push. The victory avenged a four-game sweep at the same stage in 2014.

"Going out like we did last year left a pretty bitter taste," overage Generals captain Josh Brown told TV Cogeco North Bay. "Not a day went by where we didn't think back to this situation against North Bay. This feels really good. They play a lot like us, they're a hard-nose team and we they got that goal near the end [from Nick Moutrey with 7:24 left] everyone bought back in and we stayed pretty composed.

"They have some major firepower on that team," Brown said of the Otters. "We're going to have to stick to our game plan of hitting everything and chipping the puck in and going to work."

Early prediction: Oshawa faces a major adjustment to the pace and skill of Erie. On with the post-game questions:

Eastern Conference

Oshawa 2 North Bay 1 (Generals win 4-2, will have home-ice advantage for final) — What is the latest misfortune to bite Oshawa's back end? Nineteen-year-old defenceman Will Petschenig, as it turns out, is out for the season after sustaining an injury while throwing a check during the final 90 seconds of last Friday's game.

Overage Chris Carlisle will return for the start of the final. Brown, fellow overage Dakota Mermis and 18-year-old Stephen Desrocher were the only Generals defencemen to play in every game on the blueline, since Mitchell Vande Sompel was essentially a rover, playing some D and some wing.

"We think Carlisle will be back, Petschenig will be done for the year," Generals coach D.J. Smith said at a post-game press conference. "It's a tough injury for him. He's a battler. We'll use him as a motivator.

"It's a different series coming up with some dynamic [Erie] players. I'm going to need Vande Sompel to be very good.

"Tonight we were especially calm," the third-year head coach added. "We made it really hard for them to score and found a way to sneak out a win."

McDavid didn't play in either Erie-Oshawa game during the regular season.

"First off, we're going to get a lot bigger equipment for Ken," Smith said. "Just kidding. He's the best player in the world for a reason. You just got to try to contain him. We'll look at everything possible and really make him work. Everyone knows he is an elite player. He is one player. We're going to have to make him go through all five guys, all the time."

Who was the series MVP? Seeing as there were four one-goal contests, with Oshawa winning three and the teams splitting the larger-spread games, it has to be Appleby. The North Bay native stopped 144-of-150 shots for a .960 save percentage after being mercy-pulled in the first game.

"Everyone has to be on the train and I just knew I had to be better after Game 1," Appleby said. "I just tried to do everything I do on a good day."

North Bay was shut out 5-on-5 on Sunday, with Moutrey's marker against Appleby coming on a power-play scrum. Appleby had his peak games later in the series after counterpart Jake Smith raised the bar in the early phase.

"He was unreal for their team and made life difficult for us," Appleby said.

How do the Battalion assess their season? North Bay loaded up in January, sacrificing goalie of the future Evan Cormier to add Moutrey from Saginaw and also adding New Jersey Devils signing Ryan Kujawinski from Kingston. It was enough to become a tough out before they wore down and were unable to break inside the moat that Brown and Mermis, et al., had dug  in front of Fort Appleby. For instance, Ottawa Senators signing Nick Paul went the final 334 minutes of the series without scoring, with only one assist in that span.

North Bay, among others, is bididng adieu to overage defenders Marcus McIvor and Brenden Miller and 20-year-old speedster Ray Huether (team-high three goals this round).

"It was a tough series and a tough way to go out," said Jake Smith. "Definitely disappointing how it ended but we didn't stop until the final buzzer. Our OAs were a huge part of our team and so were the other guys who are going on. I wouldn't want anthing else.

"Miller and McIvor, they just worked so hard for everybody and always put the team first," added Smith, one of the Battalion's nine 19-year-olds. "I know they're going to do well with whatever they go on to do."

The Battalion's five playoff series wins over the past two years matches their total from their final seven seasons in Brampton. That span includes their Matt Duchene/Cody Hodgson salad days. So there is that.

"I've been proud of our players all year," coach Stan Butler said. "They bring a competitive edge all the time and never give up. There were four one-goal games in the series; they won three and that's the series. Unfortunately, our inability to score at critical times hurt us. When you get in a series with two really good hockey teams, you have to make the most of our breaks. Last year we did that, this year Oshawa did. We're getting our golf clubs out — after we go to school — and they're going to the OHL championship.

"By a day, we were the third team left in the Ontario Hockey League, Every team in the final four group with us was at least 15 points better than us in the regular season. I think we had a good season. Two years in North Bay, we've won five playoff rounds and played 18 home games. Most owners in the Ontario Hockey League would not mind that."

Western Conference

Erie 7 Sault Ste. Marie 3 (Otters win 4-2) — Will the Otters be able to sustain their power-play and offensive success against the Generals, a strong possession team? Coach Kris Knoblauch's charges will once again be without home-ice advantage against a team with considerable depth, although the Generals defence corps doesn't have the marquee value of the 'Hounds with Darnell Nurse and Anthony DeAngelo.

The counters reset to zero with the start of every series. Erie, led by Connor McDavid (19 points on 28 Otters goals), went 10-for-20 on the power play against the 'Hounds. Oshawa's penalty killers, such as Aidan Wallace, utilized an aggressive puck-pressuring scheme to negate North Bay, whose nowhere near as dangerous PP finished 2-for-21. Playing aggressive against McDavid will yield a lot of open looks for the likes of Nick Baptiste and Alex DeBrincat.

Based on what the Otters did in this series, they would look to be eminently capable of a repeat showing against the Generals. That would give the West a decade-long hold on the J. Ross Robertson Cup.

How important is it to remember that the Otters ousted the 'Hounds without a full lineup? Verily, overage defenceman Kurtis MacDermid only got back from his suspension for the clincher. Six-foot-three wing Mason Marchment also has a game left on a head-checking ban. Yet Knoblauch and assistant coach Jay McKee managed their player usage very well; the absence of two elders really only affected them in the Game 5 loss.

“[MacDermid's return] just took so much pressure off of our back end,” Knoblauch told the Erie Times-News.

How much was the Hayden Verbeek's slew-footing ejection a microcosm of the series? It was a denouement, i.e., the final unravelling. The analytics and the sports psychology crowds (accredited and dollar store alike in the latter case) could have a field day on the cumulative effect of repeated penalty kill failures. In other words, there was a creeping dread as soon as Verbeek's five-minute penalty went up on the scoreboard. Two Erie goals opened a 4-2 lead and the Greyhounds never got back to even terms as they went down after their club-record 110-point regular season.

“There was no intent there,” Sault Ste. Marie coach Sheldon Keefe told the Sault Star. “The league has really cracked down on those [player-goalie collisions] and there's zero tolerance, so it is what it is."

It's the second series this spring where a penalty on a player cutting through the crease greatly helped settle the issue. Verbeek is in some distinguished company with Josh Ho-Sang.

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