By Gare Joyce

SPORTSNET.CA

There's no such thing as a good loss, coaches will tell you, and certainly not when you've taken a lead into the third period. And certainly not when it's the first game of an 0-for-3 road trip, one that lands you in the basement of your division and off the playoff grid.

The Brampton Battalion lost to the Spitfires in Windsor last Thursday. Most teams that travel to Windsor this season will do just that. The Spitfires have been the CHL's top-ranked team all season and it doesn't look likely that they'll be dislodged any time soon. The Battalion had scored three consecutive power-play goals in the second period to take a 3-2 lead into the intermission. The final line was 5-3 for the hosts, a score fattened by an empty-net goal in the last minute by Dale Mitchell, finishing off his hat trick.

"A tough one to let slip away," Brampton coach Stan Butler said.

The Battalion had to play in the Soo the next night -- the name of the schedule-maker is being withheld in advance of prosecution -- so the lads had the entire length of the state of Michigan to meditate on the defeat. The Greyhounds ended up smoking Brampton 7-1, which would lead you to believe that the loss in Windsor was a bitter pill and it stuck in the throats of the guys in army surplus green. Or that they left all their game on the ice in Windsor and on the bus.

There are no consolation prizes in junior hockey, but the Battalion had to take something away from their lost weekend, so let it be this: For 40 minutes Brampton outplayed Windsor and the Spitfires had the last change, no mean feat. And for 40 minutes the Battalion gave us a glimpse of the team they might be.

The beauty of junior hockey, the way I've always figured it, is that teams can ride one cluster of players a long way. Brampton has three forwards who can match favourably with anyone in the O, maybe anyone in major junior. That's what you saw from the Battalion in Windsor.

Start with centre Cody Hodgson. Battalion coach Butler was much relieved when the Vancouver Canucks decided that they would be best served by sending their 2008 first-rounder back to junior. It only makes sense for them and for the player: Put him in the best position to succeed.

Hodgson was a revelation at the world under-18s last spring, the captain and, with the exception of goaltender Jake Allen (as noted here), the most valuable player on the championship team. Maybe he shouldn't have been a revelation. Maybe we should have seen it coming. After all, he did rack up 40 goals and 45 assists (and five goals in five playoff games) in his draft season. Some NHL scouts weren't crazy about his skating, or at least didn't consider it a strength. The consensus is that Hodgson's strongest assets are his hockey sense and will. That's not to say that he lacks talent, just that talent doesn't mean a lot if you can't figure out what needs to be done or if you lack the commitment to make it happen. Some players want stats, others money, and others still wine, women and song. Hodgson wants to be better. This is a very good thing.

"I worked on my skating this summer with (former NHLer) Dave Gagner and I think it's really helping," Hodgson said. "It's making a difference in getting me time and space on the ice. And when you're getting to the places where you have to go with more time, you see the ice better. When you have more time you can do more with the puck."

A lot of players, maybe the majority, have a bit of a hangover after they've gone to their first pro camp and especially if they stick around for a stretch or have a shot at making the NHL straight out of junior. There was absolutely no sign of any morning-after with Hodgson in Windsor the other night. He looked like an even more dynamic player than he had been at the U-18s. He has always had a good motor but now it looks like he has more horsepower; equal parts physical maturity, strength and the work he put in with Gagner. I'd bank on Hodgson being a goal-a-game player this season and just the sort of player that the Canadian team will need at the world juniors.

Next, Matt Duchene. The nearest comparable player is, in many ways, Hodgson, who happens to be not just a teammate but a best friend from grade school days in Haliburton. Duchene is in essentially the same spot that Hodgson was a year ago: a prospective high first-rounder eligible for the NHL draft. He's a little further along than Hodgson was. Duchene played on the U-18 team last spring as an underager and captained the team that went to Slovakia for the summer tournament. In his first season of major junior he racked up 30 goals (compared to 23 for Hodgson in 2006-07). He's a top-10 prospect going into the 2009 draft; the only question is whether he's a top-five. I'd answer in the affirmative.

The first time I saw Duchene was at the under-17 tournament in London last winter. I thought he was the best player on the ice in the final, a 3-0 Ontario win over the U.S. that was a lot more lopsided than the score. In fact, I thought he was the best player I saw in the tournament and I saw every team except Germany and Slovakia. (I'm bound to hear from supporters of Luke Schenn's little brother, who was also very good.) I'd be hard-pressed to point to one aspect of Duchene's game that stands out. In that way, he's like Hodgson: an all-arounder; conscientious in his own end; a player who'll give you a chance to win.

Games are only rarely head-to-head matchups, but they do give you a chance to contrast and compare prospects. Brampton in Windsor gave you a chance to see Duchene on one side of the ice and the Spitfires' Taylor Hall on the other. Hall has already been anointed the likely first pick in the 2010 draft (the Kingston native is a late birthday). No matter, objective observers would have given the decision that night to Duchene, who scored two goals for the Battalion. That's the way NHL scouts saw it when Duchene and Hall were teammates at the under-18s last spring. (They had also played together on that Ontario team at the under-17s.)

Most prospects will shoot you the line about never giving any of these personal matchups a thought. It's enough to make a scribe lay down his pencil. Not Duchene, though.

"It's there, no denying it," Duchene says. "If you're out there with (Oshawa's) John Tavares, Taylor Hall or (London's) Nazem Kadri, it's in your mind. You want to outplay them. You want to win and the team has to come first, but still (the head-to-head) is there. The risk is that you don't want to get so caught up in it and you over-think it."

For what it's worth, I thought he had a better game than Hall -- but if your team has a chance to get either of them, you'll be alright.

Finally, there's Evgeny Grachev. The Rangers picked him in the third round (75th overall) in June and the Battalion selected him with the 40th pick in the CHL import draft. (A link to an interview from the draft.) He surely would have gone earlier in both drafts if NHL or CHL team had any confidence that he'd cross the ocean this season. For Stan Butler, it was a calculated risk worth taking.

"The Rangers told me that he was pretty clear about his desire to play in North America, the pro camp and major junior, this season," Butler says.

"I knew about him before he came here," Hodgson says. "He actually scored a couple of goals against us at the summer under-18s last year and he was on the Russian team last spring. Stan asked me about him before the import draft."

If Hodgson went shopping for a left winger to play the puck-control game he could scarcely do better than Grachev at this level. He's listed at 6-foot-3 and 202 pounds but Hodgson reckons that's a little low. "Six-four and probably 220," he says.

Gratchev is learning the small-rink game on the fly -- the game against Windsor was only his third with Brampton since his status was sorted out -- but already you can get a good idea of the player he'll develop into. When he took the puck on the cycle against the Spitfires he might as well have picked it up and tucked it in his pocket. He has the ability to put his body between the puck and a checker. The guy who has to chase him only gets a look at the seat of Grachev's pants.

Grachev hasn't racked up a goal yet -- he had all kinds of chances in Windsor and made chances for others -- but it's going to come. "He's going to be a scorer in this league," Duchene says. "As soon as he gets a couple he's going to get 20."

The Battalion could have and should have made more noise in the playoffs last spring, but Barrie's goaltender Michael Hutchinson just killed them with two overtime wins, stopping 49 of 51 shots one night and 62 of 63 in the other. The Colts won in the opening round despite being soundly outplayed in all five games. It's been a slow start for Brampton this fall, just six points in nine games, but that doesn't have anything to do with the way last season ended. No, it's a combination of factors: the late arrivals of Hodgson and Grachev; overager John Hughes opting to play in Europe; and a few soft goals. The Battalion snapped out of it Monday -- the Sudbury Wolves had only one loss when they came to Brampton Monday and were drubbed by the home team, run out of the rink. The scoreboard said Brampton 4, Sudbury zip but the shots on goal were more emphatic. Brampton's Brandon Foote had only 16 saves to make while the Wolves' Andrew Loverock faced 51 shots. If the playoffs started today, they'd start without Brampton. I suspect they'll be in the post-season and nobody, Windsor and Loverock included, would look forward to playing them.

Gare Joyce will be writing on junior hockey for Sportsnet.ca this season. A veteran journalist, Joyce is the author of Future Greats and Heartbreaks: A Year Undercover in the Secret World of NHL Scouts, When the Lights Went Out: How One Brawl Ended Hockey's Cold War and Changed the Game and Sidney Crosby: Taking the Game by Storm. He also writes for ESPN The Magazine, espn.com and several Canadian magazines.