That’s a wrap, for the Owen Sound Attack.
Jacob Battaglia scored twice and finished with five points, Nathan Aspinall had four, as the Flint Firebirds put up five power play goals in a 6-1 win over the Attack in Game 4 of the Ontario Hockey League Western Conference quarterfinal series Wednesday night at the Harry Lumley Bayshore Community Centre.
The Firebirds completed a dominant sweep, outscoring the Attack 35-3 in four games to advance to the Western Conference semifinals.
Jimmy Lombardi and Iggy Pazii also had goals in Game 4. The Firebirds led 2-0 after the first period. It was 4-1 after the second. They added two more in the third. Flint never trailed in the series.
Pierce Mbuyi had the lone goal for the Attack, which was swept out of the first round of the OHL playoffs for a fourth straight season.
“It’s not easy to win in this league. You watched a team play us and they didn’t get out of their structure one bit. They were blocking shots right to the last second. And that’s what it takes,” says Attack Head Coach Scott Wray. “They’re an (older) team. They have a lot of 19- and 20-year-olds. It takes time to learn how to win in this league. It calluses you a bit. It teaches you lessons of…instead of playing ‘me’ hockey, playing ‘we’ hockey.”
The loss for the Attack ends a season that started with promise, but certainly had more downs than ups over the 68-game grind. The Attack were the belle of the ball through the first month of the season. But that was the high point, 9-2 by mid-October. The losses started piling from there. A surprise trade happened on Halloween — Michael Dec was sent to the Erie Otters. And then the biggest question surrounding the team ahead of the 2025-26 campaign was answered after Christmas, but it wasn’t the resolution most fans were hoping for. Carter George requested a trade. He was moved to Soo. The team’s captain at the start of the season, David Bedkowski, also exited before the OHL trade deadline in January. He was sent to Ottawa.
George’s final game for the Attack was a 5-1 loss to the Erie Otters at the Bayshore on Dec. 6. It was the first in a seven-game losing streak. And that skid was the first of three lengthy slides the Attack endured throughout December, January and February. A pair of seven-game skids, and then an eight-game losing streak.
“It’s been a wild year. At the start of the year, you can’t do anything wrong. And then in the middle of the year when Carter went to World Juniors we couldn’t do anything right. And it took us a lot of time to get our footing after that,” Wray says. “We’re really going to have to assess what we’re doing and who we’re bringing in. And why we’re bringing them in.”
What comes next? Take away the expectations created in the early days of the 2025-26 season by the strong start, it was the second year of a new cycle for the Attack. Owen Sound finished the regular season 27-32-4-5. In all, they had one more win than in 2024-25. The playoffs were the same story: out in four.
Owen Sound now heads into the offseason a bit of playoff paradox. They have made it there for 15 consecutive seasons, the second longest active streak in the OHL. But the Attack are also starved of playoff success. They haven’t won a playoff game since the 2021-22 season. The fans at the Bayshore haven’t cheered past the first round since 2018. Both those droughts, longest in the OHL.
Wray acknowledges the fans are hungry for better results come playoff time. For him, just making the playoffs isn’t enough: “I want to make the playoffs and learn how to win rounds.”
“Days like these days I feel like we let them down. And I let them down. That’s going to stick with me all summer. And moving forward, we need to figure this out,” he says. “We owe it to them to play better and be better in playoff time. Not regular season … they only remember you come playoff time. And that’s on our bulletin board right now. How do we become a better playoff hockey team?”
Wray pointed to Flint’s moves in season to help get them to the spot where they are now in the spring, positioned for playoff success. The Firebirds made some key additions, surrounding some of their homegrown talent like Nathan Aspinall and Jimmy Lombardi, with NHL drafted players Kevin He and Jacob Battaglia in trades with Niagara Ice Dogs and Kingston Frontenacs.
“That’s what you have to do in this league. You’ve got to load up to win. That’s how it’s done,” the Attack head coach says.
Mbuyi, the team’s young captain, says he felt the team was disconnected and it showed in this series against the Firebirds.
“We weren’t really together. I think Flint, every inch of the ice, they were playing just harder than us. (They were) competing harder than us, blocking shots until the last minute there,” Mbuyi says. “I think overall, it was just not a good series from us.”
What does progress look like next season?
“I think it’s just coming together,” Mbuyi says. “Building a culture and sticking (to it) throughout the year. Not getting to high, not getting to low. I think that hot start maybe got to our heads, and obviously that led to a bit of a slide and a downfall. I think staying even keel throughout the season.”