Brantford Bulldogs advanced to the second round of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) playoffs after a 5-1 win over the North Bay Battalion on Saturday, April 5, 2025.
The Bulldogs were led to the game five victory by RW Nick Lardis, who recorded his first OHL playoff hat-trick, and G Ryerson Leenders, who stopped 23 of 24 shots he faced in the game.
The Bulldogs wasted no time to get on the scoreboard. Just nine seconds into the powerplay and over two minutes into the contest, D Tomas Hamara dumped the puck to the front of the Battalion goal. C Jake O’Brien retrieved the puck and passed it to RW Marek Vanacker, who passed to Lardis for the shot through the screen and past North Bay G Mike McIvor for his fifth of the series.
After twenty minutes of play, the score remained 1-0 for the Bulldogs. Both McIvor and Leenders were busy in between their respective nets but the Bulldogs poured in the goal count in the middle frame. It started at four minutes in when LW Cole Brown skated the puck down to the attacking zone, fed the puck to the streaking Lardis, and his shot snuck in between the pads of McIvor for his second of the game and sixth of the series.
The Battalion got on the board at the 7:18 mark. RW Nick Wellenreiter forced the turnover from Bulldogs LW Dylan Tsherna near the blue line, and LW Lirim Amidowski retrieved the puck at the centre area in the Brantford zone and fired past Leenders.
The Bulldogs reignited their offensive prowess and solidified their lead. After McIvor made the initial save, RW Calvin Crombie passed the puck to D Owen Protz. Protz skated from near the blue line and rifled the puck past the Battalion netminder for a 3-1 lead. It was the first career playoff goal for the third-year defenceman in the Ontario Hockey League.
But the Bulldogs weren’t done. Less than thirty seconds after the Protz goal, Lardis completed the hat-trick. Brown dished the puck to a wide-opened Lardis from the centre area of their attacking zone, who unleashed a rocket strike from the left side past McIvor for the 4-1 lead.
At one point during the period, the Bulldogs outshot their counterparts 13-1 at the midway mark. The Bulldogs believed they had scored their third straight goal in less than a minute with 7:54 left, but the officials determined they were offside. Nevertheless, the Bulldogs held a commanding 4-1 lead through forty minutes.
Despite given up the goal in the first shot of the period, the Brantford netminder kept the door shut with eight straight saves.
Early in the third period, the Bulldogs cemented their win with another goal. At the Battalion zone, Crombie intercepted the pass, proceeded on a breakaway and made the backhand shot past McIvor for his third of the series.
From there, Leenders and the Bulldogs kept the Battalion in bay for the rest of the period and preserved the series-clinching victory.
The win marked the first series win for the Bulldogs franchise since the 2022 OHL Championship and the first for a Brantford OHL team since they dispatched the London Knights in the 1983 Emms Division first-round series.
