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.

The Brampton Battalion got back into their OHL final series against the Windsor Spitfires by returning to what got them there.

WINDSOR -- The Spitfires' fans packed the WFCU last night to say farewell to this season's team and give them a fitting send-off to the Memorial Cup. With a 2-0 lead going into Game 3, it would have been their last chance for the vast majority to see their team, the nation's top-ranked crew, live this season. Stringing two last wins in Windsor's playoff run seemed like a pretty sure thing.

And, of course, it didn't work out that way. For the fans in Windsor it wasn't farewell-til-next-fall, just see-ya-on-Friday. That's when the Spitfires will host Brampton in Game 5, now necessary after the Brampton Battalion's 4-2 win Monday night.

I can't remember an arena go as quiet as the WFCU did last night when the Brampton Battalion jumped out to a 4-0 lead on the Windsor Spitfires. Each goal piled on left less and less air in the arena.

The Brampton Battalion's previous trip to the WFCU, the opening game of the OHL final, was a not-so-small disaster, an absolute humbling, a nightmare and/or worse. No description suffices when the final numbers on the scoreboard read Home 10, Visitors 1. At that point it looked like a Windsor sweep was a sure thing.

And that notion was reinforced when the Spitfires were averaging more than a shot a minute while jumping out to a 3-0 first-period lead in Game 2 in Brampton on Friday. The Battalion did not look like a team that could win and would be hard-pressed to skate away with any dignity.

The turn-around started in the second period of that second game and the turn-about became complete last night.

Explanations: Start with how the Battalion struggled for the first four periods of this series.

It's fair to say that the Brampton players respected the Windsor Spitfires. It would be closer to the truth to observe that they respected them too much.

The Battalion players have advanced through the post-season playing their game but they felt that they had to raise their game, going faster, doing more, against the best team they've faced this season.

In doing that, they got outside their usual game, making bad decisions and awful turnovers, all quickly and clinically finished by the Spitfires.

From the second period of Game 2 and on through last night's game the Battalion played with respect for the Spitfires but one tempered with confidence and composure.

Last night it was good enough for the win.

Of course it was easier to be confident and composed when the other team is giving away goals, especially three minutes into the game. That's what happened on the opening goal by Anthony Peluso, a long, floating change-up that Spitfires netminder Andrew Engelage cleanly whiffed on just below the crossbar on the glove side. The raucous arena went silent for the first time but far from the last.

It was like their worst fears were confirmed -- that if this Windsor team had any Achilles Heel it was in goal. It was an unforgivable goal at any juncture but especially in these late stages of the season -- you can just imagine how soul-crushing it would be for players to see their goalie spot the other guys one goal in a Memorial Cup final. The doomsday scenario.

At the other end, Brampton goaltender Thomas McCollum was busy but growing more confident.

"I could see it in his eyes," Brampton captain Cody Hodgson said. "If he makes a couple of big stops early in the game he gets this look."

And he had the look.

Eleven minutes in, McCollum skated to the bench on a delayed penalty and the Battalion advanced the puck up the ice smartly with some precision passing, the last pass off the stick of Matt Duchene behind the net to Hodgson, unmarked, perched on Engelage's porch. Two-zip. Hush again. And more than that, it seemed to put Duchene and Hodsgon on track after being stymied by the Spitfires through the first two games of the series.

"Our best players stepped up," Brampton coach Stan Butler said. "They did a lot of good things without the puck."

That was precisely what happened on that goal -- both Duchene and Hodgson left behind flatfooted defenders to create the chance with the extra attacker.

It wasn't just the score that subdued the crowd. No, the physical battle was pretty much a square-off. Neither the crowd nor the team could draw much energy out of any big hits by the Spitfires, on form the bigger-hitting team. In fact the biggest two hits in the first period were delivered by Brampton d-man Matt Clark, who put Greg Nemisz into the Battalion bench on one shift and flattened Dale Mitchell on the next. It was a mostly tidy game for Clark (save a gaffe on the final goal, but I'll get to that).

The Spitfires didn't flat-line, mind you. They carried the play to Brampton after the first intermission but McCollum was big sometimes, huge the others. After a desultory Game 1 (in front of his future employers, the brass of the Detroit Red Wings), and two weak goals in Game 2, McCollum showed why Butler thought that he wasn't just the best goaltender available at the trading deadline but, in fact, the best goaltender in the league. He made 32 saves on the night but in that stretch, when a Windsor goal would have been a bodyshot to the Battalion, McCollum was at his best for the night.

Butler was effusive in his praise for the netminder -- he realizes that the toughest challenge for Windsor this year was the conference semifinal versus Plymouth when goalie Matt Hackett, top-ranked by Central Scouting for this year's draft, stole a couple of games for the Whalers. Butler has to believe that McCollum is capable of doing all of that and more.

Just past the game's halfway mark Duchene on a wired wrist shot made it 3-0, a clinical finish, a flash of the skill that has him in the conversation as the best prospect in the upcoming NHL draft. It was already by Engelage when he waved at it.

A couple of shifts later Jason Dale beat Engelage, pushing the puck past him in a goalmouth scramble.

Maybe the Brampton players might have thought that they had it all figured out but Taylor Hall served a couple of reminders of the perils that are still ahead in the series: two goals, nifty dekes at full speed, with d-men in the jet stream. The most impressive of them was the second, ten minutes into the final frame, when he burst up the middle of the ice, splitting Clark and Ken Peroff. At once in front of them, Hall was by them in a blink. Scary stuff. He looked full value as the morning-line favorite to be the top pick in next year's NHL draft.

But that's as close as the Spitfires would get. The Battalion did a good job reining in the game, playing puck possession hockey. In the final 10 minutes, the hometown heroes went all in but conceded more quality chances than they generated.

Game 4 will go in Brampton Wednesday night. If it's not quite a new series, well, those who are watching it will be looking at it in a different way. But maybe that's not true of the players.

After Game 2 I wrote that the Battalion dressing room was a lot more positive in the wake of the second loss to the Spitfires. Last night the converse: The team wasn't over the moon or anything like it. I mentioned this to Hodgson and he pointed to the players emerging from the Battalion's dressing room.

"That's the way this team is -- never too high, never too low. Look at them after this game. We're happy with the win but we know there's still a lot of work left for us."

I'm sure they'll see some of that work in video sessions today, the Hall goals being mandatory viewing.