The Kitchener Rangers hosted the North Bay Battalion on Sunday evening at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium to close out their first triple-header of the season. On Friday night, they dominated the Flint Firebirds on home ice. Then, on Saturday, the Blueshirts lost a tightly contested game in overtime to the Barrie Colts.
Related: 3 Takeaways From Kitchener Rangers’ Dominant Win Over Flint Firebirds
Sunday’s opponent, the Battalion, ranked 10th in the Ontario Hockey League’s power rankings this week, and had a 7-6-0-0 record coming into the Aud on Sunday night. However, they were without their leading goalscorer, Ryder Cali, who has seven goals in his rookie season and received a ‘B’ rating in the NHL Central Scouting’s recent rankings for the 2026 NHL Entry Draft.
On the Rangers’ side, they were without Max Dirracolo, who was suspended for one game after stepping up and fighting 6-foot-7 Gabriel Eliasson. It was a fight Dirracolo had to take after Eliasson clipped Jason Schaubel behind the net, and he did a great job standing up for his goalie against the Ottawa Senators‘ second-round pick, who is known for his physicality. Still, the instigator got him a one-game suspension.
While on lineups and physicality, the Rangers got Toronto Maple Leafs prospect Matthew Hlacar back in the lineup after serving a six-game suspension.
Game Recap
The Battalion had the first few chances of the game. However, the Rangers had the more dangerous chances, with Tanner Lam setting up Luca Romano on a couple of high-quality chances early in the first period before Romano stole a pass in the defensive zone and got loose for a shorthanded breakaway, which was the best chance of the period.
The Rangers finally broke the ice on the power play with 1.9 seconds left in the second period, after “Let’s go Rangers” chants rang through the Aud on the offensive zone draw that led to Romano’s goal from above the circles.
The Rangers then took control in the third with another power-play goal less than seven minutes into the final frame. It was scored by Nashville Predators first-round pick and Rangers captain, Cameron Reid. His wrist shot went through a crowd and came from nearly the same place as Romano’s shot, which opened the scoring.
The Battalion finally got on the board with under 10 minutes to play in the third period, when Lirim Amidovski, a Minnesota Wild prospect, went behind the Rangers’ net and beat Christian Kirsch with a wraparound — kinda, we’ll get to it.
This was the Rangers’ lone defensive lapse of the game, but it was too little, too late. The Rangers closed out the 3-1 victory with Romano adding his second goal of the game on the empty net in the final two minutes. Paired with an Owen Sound Attack loss, the Rangers are now in first place in the Midwest Division.
Standouts from the game were Romano, who has three goals and five points in his last two games. Reid scored his first goal of the season, and Humphreys stayed hot with another multipoint performance.
A Battle of Tired Legs and Defensive Structure
It was a busy weekend for both of these teams. Sunday night’s contest was the third game in three days for the Rangers and the third game in four days for the Battalion.
Throughout the game, you could tell there was some fatigue at play. Neither team had a ton of jump to take over the game, and it looked like both were content to sit back, trap the neutral zone, and suppress scoring chances rather than chase in on the forecheck and get out of position on tired legs. This resulted in a much lower event game than what the Rangers played on Saturday night against the Barrie Colts.
While a lower-scoring game might have been expected, given that both of these teams ranked in the top half of the league. The Battalion finished the game with 30 shots, outshooting the Rangers by nine. However, the Rangers did a good job of keeping these shots to the outside and clearing traffic in front.
The lone goal came off a miscue in their own end, picking a puck up off the wall, and the Rangers didn’t have enough gas to recover in time on the play. These things are going to happen; it is just about limiting those mistakes, and the Rangers did a good job of that in this one, in a tough scheduling spot, which deserves a lot of credit.
Christian Kirsch’s Incredible Consistency
Kirsch has been incredible early in the season. He has made nine starts for the Rangers, and in eight of those nine, he has a .900 save percentage or above. The outlier was a game against the London Knights, where Kirsch had little help in front of him. After allowing five goals, he was pulled, and Jason Schaubel came in to finish the game.
Since then, Kirsch has saved 65 of the 69 shots he has faced in his next three starts, including the 28 saves he made against the Battalion on Sunday night.
Kirsch wasn’t overly challenged in the game. As mentioned, he didn’t face a ton of high-danger opportunities, but he made all the saves he needed to, swallowed up anything left lying in front of his net, and his highlight of the night was turning away a shorthanded breakaway.
Following the game, Kirsch said, “It was a huge team effort, right? I made a couple of good saves to keep the team in the game,” when asked about his performance by Josh Piercey of 570 News. Regarding the goal he allowed, Kirsch added, “That was just an unlucky goal.”
The wraparound Amidovski scored on wasn’t your traditional wrap, where the player gets around the post and beats the goalie before they have time to slide across. On this one, Amidovski delayed just a second and caught Kirsch’s five-hole open — a weird one, for sure — that would have been very preventable had it not come off a broken breakout play.
With the way Kirsch has been playing, he has quickly eliminated the questions around the Rangers’ goaltending that they came into the season with.
Special Teams Starting to Click
Special teams have been one of the few areas of concern for the Rangers early this season, specifically the penalty kill, which has ranked toward the bottom of the league since the start of the season.
Well, on Sunday night, the penalty kill was perfect, killing off all four of the Battalion’s chances on the man advantage. In fact, with Romano’s second goal, the shorthanded empty netter, the Rangers actually finished the night with a positive goal differential while on the kill. This capped off a weekend in which the Rangers killed off 9 of 11 penalties.
On the flip side, the Rangers’ special teams scored two power-play goals on five attempts against the Battalion and converted 5 of 13 on the man advantage this weekend.
Following Sunday’s win, head coach Jussi Ahokas mentioned he was “happy today, with our special teams, P.K. [penalty kill] and power play,” and added, “You win games when they are working.” He also said, “that they have been working on it a lot, and it’s getting better. And that is what we need if we want to play well.”
With the special teams clicking, the Rangers have points in four straight games and are 5-1-1-0 in their last eight. After some early-season questions about consistency, they came out of their first weekend with back-to-back-to-back games with five of a possible six points.
Next weekend, the Rangers get to play a struggling Sudbury Wolves team and a middle-of-the-pack Brampton Steelheads. Two great chances for the Rangers to continue their four-game point streak that started with the bounce-back victory over the London Knights.
