Battalion 2, 67’s 1 (OT)

OTTAWA — Though there’s still a half a season to play, when all is said and done in mid-March, the Ontario Hockey League’s Eastern Conference title may come down to the head-to-head matchups between the Brampton Battalion and Ottawa 67’s.

At this point, it’s 3-0 Brampton with just one more to play between them.

The two co-leaders atop the Conference going into this game went at it for 64 minutes and 11 seconds before Michael Santini beat Petr Mrazek with just 49.9 seconds remaining in overtime to vault the Battalion past the 67’s before a Civic Centre crowd of 6,139 Friday night.

The win pushed the Battalion one point up on the 67’s and marked their second win on Ottawa ice.

To the 67’s credit, they were facing a fully-armed Battalion, with barely enough players dressed to form a color guard.

Head coach Chris Byrne even joked before the game with his assistants about matching lines, then said after noticing Brampton had four full lines to the 67’s three, “I don’t think it’s a night to match,” said Byrne.

The 67’s played minus six regulars with Shane Prince off with the American Junior National Team and Michal Cajkovsky away with the Slovakian team, both training for the upcoming World Junior Championships in Edmonton and Calgary.

Mrazek said he might as well stay up all night and head to the airport as he had to be there at 5 a.m. to leave for Calgary and meet up with the Czech Republic team set to train in Camrose for 10 days.

Then there’s the list of injured currently numbering four.

If not for the return of Tyler Toffoli and Cody Ceci from the Canadian camp, the 67’s would have played with just 14 skaters.

And the 67’s still fired 39 shots at the Brampton net, outshot the visitors 39-28, Dalton Smith hit two posts himself and the 67’s squandered another half dozen passes across the Brampton goal-mouth.

“We missed a lot of two to five-footers,” said Bryne. “But if we played like that 10 nights in a row, we’d win eight or nine.

“Not too many teams get 40 shots on Brampton. Okay, 39.”

The 67’s got on the board in the weirdest of manners 13 minutes into the opening period, when Smith used the boards to fire it into the Brampton from outside the blueline and wound up with a wind-aided goal, his sixth of the season.

Toffoli gave chase and when Brampton defenceman Cameron Wind skated in front of his goalie Keegan Wilson, Toffili merely pushed Wind into his goalie and the puck found the back of the net.

That lead lasted more than 20 minutes of elapsed time before the 67’s got sloppy in their own end and Brandon Robinson tied it against a defenceless Mrazek at 14:08 of the second, a period the 67’s outshot Brampton 16-9.

The 67’s were just 11 seconds from a shootout when Santini struck.

“I got a lucky bounce,” said Santini. “It was a great win for us.

“We didn’t seem to have much when we got off the boss but a win here is huge.”

And things don’t get any easier for Ottawa.

The 67’s scatter for nine days after concluding both the first half and the pre-Christmas portion of their schedule Saturday in Barrie and Sunday in Oshawa.