Now that the season is over for the North Bay Battalion the work on the 2017-18 club is already underway.

Coach and Director of Hockey Operations Stan Butler says the team’s culture has to improve and they’ll need a good start to prove to the fans that this past season was just a blip.

North Bay has the 3rd pick in the OHL Priority Selection, which will be held on Saturday April 8th.

Butler says there’s 6 or 7 players they’re looking at.

“I’m not saying you’re going to get a great player, but you’re going to get a good player and you’re going to get a lot better player probably in the draft that we’ve had access to in the past,” he says.

As for this past season, Butler says his team cut corners in practice and it came back to haunt them in games.

He says usually a team goes through a process and if it gets off track the veteran guys will get it back on and they learn from the experience.

“That really never happened and to be honest with you that’s one thing as a coaching staff we learned this year, is that next year we’re not going to wait until things get back on track, we’re going to make sure they never get off track,” he says.

Butler says this past season was the most disappointing of his career as the team missed the playoffs for just the 3rd time in franchise history.

The Battalion lost their final game of the regular season 5-4 to Kingston on Sunday afternoon.

That loss left the Troops 9th in the Eastern Conference, two points back of Niagara for the final playoff spot.

North Bay will be choosing players from 3 different drafts in the coming weeks.

On top of the OHL priority selection on April 8th, there’s also the under 18 priority selection 4 days later and the CHL import draft.

On the injury front, Butler says he’s looking forward to the return of Cam Dineen, while both Riley Bruce and Jacob Ball have had surgery and must be off skates for 6 months.

He also says Andy Baker and Alex Robert will be given long looks at making the team.