Gare Joyce

Gare Joyce writes regularly on junior hockey for Sportsnet.ca. 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.

Brampton is down 2-0 to Windsor in the OHL final, but that doesn't mean they don't have a chance to battle back.

BRAMPTON: Can Brampton make a series of the OHL final? Is there any hope that the Battalion can stretch the championship to five games?

Those were the questions on the minds of fans and maybe even the players on both teams after a 10-1 Windsor rout on Monday night. Real doubt was justified.

Twenty minutes into Game 2 on Friday night it seemed there was no suspense left.

Windsor hadn’t just jumped into a 3-0 lead in Game 2. No, the Spitfires had won every shift in doing that. In fact, the Spitfires had won every shift going back to the second intermission of Game 1.

When Dale Mitchell opened the scoring for the visitors not quite 11 minutes after the opening face-off, the shots on goal were Windsor 15 Brampton 1. Across more than 31 minutes of play against the Spitfires, the Battalion had mustered just two shots in total.

Series over, right?

Thankfully, even unexpectedly, not.

Oh sure, the Spitfires emerged a 5-3 winner at the end of the night, but if someone had told you after 20 minutes that it was going to be a one-goal game, call him up immediately and ask him for stock tips. He probably bet the house on Mine That Bird and hit the superfecta.

I suppose it could have been worse. Brampton netminder Thomas McCollum had made some big saves to that point. Those 14 shots he turned aside constituted at least seven quality scoring chances. It looked like he might hold Windsor to a 1-0 lead long enough to give coach Stan Butler a chance to ream out his players. But then, in the last two minutes of the period, McCollum gave up two bad goals, a long drifter from defenceman Mark Cundari in a short-handed situation and, 25 seconds, another from blueliner Ben Shutron. Shots 22-4 through one period: Even more damning that it sounds, given that the Spitfires had to kill two minors in that stretch and didn’t have a powerplay themselves.

At that point you might have thought it more likely to find signs of life in a crater on the moon rather than in the Brampton dressing room. But somehow Brampton emerged for the second period and created six of the first seven scoring chances in the period.

"I challenged the team," Butler said afterward. His exact words? They’d set off your obscenity filter.

Jason Dale and Matt Kang picked up goals for the home side and even though Andrei Loktionov got one back for Spitfires late in the period, Brampton outshot Windsor 17-12 over the course of the first twenty. It wasn’t a complete turn-around by any stretch but at least the Battalion applied the brakes.

When Kang scored again about eight minutes into the third period and the score stood at 4-3, it seemed like the Eastern Conference champions were ready not just to claw back to tie but even make a real series of it. Too bad the on-ice officials imposed themselves on the action a couple of shifts later, not quite shutting the window for Brampton but closing it halfway.

The refs hit Brampton defenceman Brad Albert with a double minor for a hit from behind. Two things: It wasn’t from behind and it wasn’t Albert. It was, in fact, Jason Dale. You might have thought it was a borderline penalty but it wasn’t a hit from behind. Making this even more peculiar was the fact that this blown call wasn’t the lapse of a single referee. No, in fact, it came at the end of a lengthy consultation between the zebras and it seemed a linesman was the swing vote on the penalty.

Time was working against the Battalion before a puzzled Albert went to the box, even more so after. And time ran out when Taylor Hall picked up an empty netter in the last minute of regulation.

What started out as a one-sided beating ended up being a tough loss. That might not look like a big difference but the mood in the home team’s dressing room was a lot better for it.

It wouldn’t be accurate to call it upbeat but it wasn’t crestfallen either. The general feeling: One got away. The idea to carry into Game 3 in Windsor on Monday night: We can stay with guys.

Look, if someone told you that the troika of Cody Hodgson, Matt Duchene and Evgeni Grachev would be held to a single assist in a game, you’d have expected a result along the lines of the 10-1 opener.

Ditto if someone told you that it was going to be the foot soldiers and not the stars deciding the series.

And double ditto if someone told you that Windsor, up there among the leaders in penalty minutes this season, would be on the powerplay more often than the more disciplined Brampton side.

The Spitfires have managed to shut down Hodgson, Duchene and Grachev so far — Ben Shutron talked about "not giving them time and space." Pulled right out of The Cliché Handbook. Fact is, the likes of Harry Young, Shutron and Cundari have stayed close enough to breathe on the Battalion’s big threats and they’re roughing them up in the process. Grachev looks off his game, too often circling in his own zone and trying to go end to end.

To win this series Brampton will have to steal two games in the WFCU and win four of the next five. Daunting stuff but that’s looking too far ahead. First order of business: Can they win Game 3?

Yup. A message that the Battalion seemed to come away with Friday night and one that Windsor coach Bob Boughner will have to deliver to his team before they step on the ice.

How can Brampton beat the team that’s been either No. 1 or No. 2 in the CHL all season long?

A few things need to fall into place.

1. Hodgson, Duchene and Grachev will have to get going.

2. Brampton will have to be on the powerplay more often that Windsor. See No. 1.

3. Thomas McCollum will have to make big saves like he did in the first ten minutes and not give up dubious goals like Cundari’s and Shutron’s.

4. A couple of Brampton players will have to step forward and make a physical statement against a bigger and bigger-hitting Windsor team. Anthony Peluso is the most obvious candidate. He was un-noticeable in the final until he made a nifty pass on Kang’s second goal. One or two others, please step forward.

5. The Battalion will have to play with a desperation like they showed coming out of the first intermission Friday night.

6. Windsor will have to be down a quart.

It will be hard for all of those to fall into place. But it’s not like Mine That Bird or anything.