The St. Michael's Majors are young but they have the grit to try and battle back from the brink of extinction in their series with the Brampton Battalion.
BRAMPTON - Everyone likes to focus on the last shifts of a game as crunch time, just as the natural inclination is to look at the last round of a championship fight as the climax of an evening's hostilities. Fact is, though, this is only occasionally the case.
Far more games are decided in the first few shifts than in the last minutes of play. In boxing, it's something to write home about if a fight boils down to the winner of the last round-a vast majority either don't make it to the twelfth round or have the winner a three-minute dance away from an easy decision.
So it was in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semi-final last night when the Brampton Battalion beat the Mississauga St. Michael's Majors 4-2, a score that looks closer than it played out. Better indicators: The game was 4-0 after two periods and at that juncture, the Majors pulled a fairly blameless goaltender JP Anderson, who had faced 30 shots according to the game summary but unrelenting pressure with the Battalion winning shift after shift.
The Battalion, second-seeded in the conference, has a 3-2 lead over the fourth-seeded Majors in the series which resumes hostilities in Mississauga at 7:30 tonight. Of the three Brampton wins, it's fair to say that this was the most comfortable.
St. Mike's coach Dave Cameron was to the point after the game. "They scored first and we took some bad penalties early," Cameron said. "We were never able to get on track."
True enough. Any momentum the Majors might have gained with two consecutive wins dissipated when they faced three Brampton power plays in the first 10 minutes. The Majors have struggled to find offence at the best of times in this series while Brampton can ice a highly-skilled power play featuring Cody Hodgson, Matt Duchene and Evgeni Grachev. For Mississauga having to start in retreat last night was about the least promising way to commence what had become a best-of-three series. The penalties weren't great and the worst of them was Kyle Neuber's hit from behind -- and on the ensuing power play Anthony Peluso gave the Battalion a 1-zip lead. The best measure of play to that point, around the ten-minute mark: Shots on goal were Brampton 16, Mississauga 5.
The Majors closed that differential for the balance of the period but weren't really generating quality chances. Coming from behind just isn't there game. A goal, maybe. More than that, very tough. And by the second intermission it was a heckuva lot more than that, 4-love.
Hodgson picked up Goal No. 2 on a power play. Hodgson's quality has been plain all season long, in the world juniors in particular, but in this series the Majors had checked him into frustration-they hadn't got into his head but were definitely under his skin and occasionally the ultra-disciplined Hodgson went chippy.
Goal No. 3 was credited to Sam Carrack, a promising-looking rookie, though precisely how it went in was hard to tell. JP Anderson couldn't have known either -- lots of traffic in front of the net on a shot that looked like it was going wide. For Brampton, an early lead and bounces. For Mississauga, bad news getting worse.
Goal No. 4 was highlight-video stuff by Grachev. The Majors turned the puck over in their end of the rink with pressure by Hodgson among others. Grachev headed to the net. Skill then took over. "I just wanted to deflect the shot [by Brampton defenceman Alexander Eriksson] but the puck ended up in my skates and so I got it up high," Grachev said.
"Up high" doesn't do the play justice. He was in so tight on Anderson that he could see the whites of his eyes. He then roofed a shot, about 70 degrees from release to the top corner, in and out before Anderson could move. Clinical stuff. Four-naught.
Mississauga picked up a couple of goals in third period, Michael Pelech and Josh McFadden doing the work. And in the last nine minutes of play the Majors had several good chances to make it a one-goal game but Brampton goaltender Thomas McCollum was up to the task.
The exclamation point on the win for Brampton came at the expense of Majors forward Kaspars Daugavins. With a little over three minutes to play Battalion d-man Brad Albert caught Daugavins with a vicious but absolutely-legal check right at centre ice -- Daugavins had his head down and likely will never know what hit him because he'll never be able to bear watching the video. He was down on the ice for a few minutes, missing Pelech's attempt to pay back Albert in an action-filled tilt. The instigator penalty to Pelech iced the game and the help Daugavins needed to get off the ice doesn't bode well for the Majors if they need his help tonight -- he might be able to play and I suspect that he will, but he won't be 100 percent by any stretch.
The Majors can still find reasons for encouragement. In the past week they've won more games against Brampton than they managed in eight attempts during the regular season. They're patient -- only when they fell behind two and three goals last night did they seem to press too hard and squeeze sticks too tightly. Their defensive positioning would make them a nettlesome opponent for any team at this point -- it was something that first occurred to me earlier this season when I saw them in Windsor, denying the high-flying Spitfires a shot for 10 or 12 minutes after giving up 30 in the first 30 minutes. (I know it doesn't sound like much … then again look at the shots totals in the Windsor-Plymouth series. Sixty-one shots in last night's win over the Whalers, more in other games. I wonder if the New Jersey Devils could hold them to 40 shots.) It always seems like they get five bodies between the puck and the net no matter how well opponents move it around inside the Majors' blueline.
Just in the course of last two months of the regular season and ten playoff games Mississauga's youngish core of talent has raised its play. Two draft-eligible Majors, centre Casey Cizikas and defenceman Brett Flemming, would be hard to recognize if you had only seen them in the first half of the season. Pelech and Cizikas have done a great job vs. Hodgson and Duchene, while Flemming moves the puck around and exercises game judgment like a 20-year-old in this league.
Even though Chris Carrozzi went in for third period last night, I'd bank on Anderson getting the call again for the Majors in Game 6. Last night notwithstanding, Anderson has been Mississauga's best player in this series -- it's like that triple overtime win in the deciding game in Barrie in the opening round has given him boundless confidence and cool under pressure. The Battalion players shouldn't count on having Easter brunch with their families -- Game Seven, if necessary, is slated for 2 p.m. Sunday at the Bunker.
Things that fell out of my notebook … Brampton coach Stan Butler has had Grachev playing on Duchene's wing for almost the entire season but has moved the big Russian to Hodgson's line… Home team's held serve last night, just what you'd expect, but other than London's sweep of Saginaw, the OHL conference semis have been tighter and tougher than you'd expect. Top-seeded Belleville did eliminate Niagara last night but with a bounce or two going the other way the Bulls could have been playing to stay alive. Meanwhile, the top seed on the other side, Windsor, prevailed against Plymouth 5-2 to take a three-games-to-two lead. Going in, the consensus was that these series would probably have been that no series out of the four would go more than five games. The top two teams in each conference had clearly separated themselves from the pack during the regular season. No coincidence that in the two series that continue this weekend feature underdogs getting lights-out netminding: Anderson with Mississauga and Matt Hackett with Plymouth. If you're keeping tabs, going into last night's game Anderson's save percentage was .937 while Hackett's was .932. All you need to know: Hackett gave up five goals last night, but with Windsor's shots total that's not going to bring down his number that much.
