BRAMPTON, Ont. – As the Ontario Hockey League season enters February with seven weekends of action left, the Brampton Battalion opens a second consecutive three-in-three stretch with a 7 p.m. Friday visit to the Erie Otters.

“We’re in a dogfight with less than 20 games to go,” said Stan Butler, Battalion director of hockey operations and head coach, who celebrated his 56th birthday Thursday. “The wins continue to get tougher and tougher as we go forward.”

The Battalion, which visits the Niagara IceDogs on Saturday night before hosting the Sudbury Wolves at 2 p.m. Sunday, boasts a won-lost-extended record of 27-13-9 for 63 points, tied for first place in the Central Division with Niagara, which visits the London Knights on Friday night.

Butler, who received an eight-game suspension last Thursday for interaction with referee Mike Marley following a 2-1 home-ice win Jan. 22 over Sudbury, is to serve the fourth game of the suspension at Erie.

“I’ve got confidence in both assistant coaches, Jason Ward and Ryan Oulahen,” noted Butler. “They both have good hockey experience and, whether we have injured players or something isn’t exactly the same as it normally is, we have to find ways to win hockey games.”

Said left winger Brett Mackie: “We all know it’s a big weekend for us. Last weekend wasn’t our best. Maybe we got off our game a little bit, but we had a good week of practice and everyone is ready to go.”

Erie is 6-37-4 for 16 points, fifth in the Midwest Division. The Battalion, which went 6-3-4 in January, defeated the visiting Otters 5-2 on Jan. 15.

“Our team needs to compete a lot harder than they did last weekend,” said Butler of the Troops, who lost 6-2 at home Friday night to the Barrie Colts before rallying to defeat the host Oshawa Generals 3-2 Saturday night.

“We played a good 40 minutes of hockey last weekend in the second and third periods against Oshawa. What’s made our team successful is our ability to have a high standard on a shift-by-shift basis, and we need everyone on the same page.”

Mackie, a resident of Whitby, Ont., was acquired in an Oct. 4 trade with the Belleville Bulls in exchange for a conditional eighth-round pick in the 2013 OHL Priority Selection.

“We have to go into every weekend trying to win every game and just stick to playing Battalion hockey,” noted Mackie.

A fourth-round choice by Belleville in the 2007 OHL Priority Selection, Mackie is one of three overagers on the Battalion roster.

He has scored nine goals and earned 12 assists for a career-high 21 points in 45 games with the Troops after playing the first two games of the Bulls’ season. He had 20 points, including a career-high 12 goals, in 68 games with Belleville last year.

“We need to play simple hockey and have everyone committing to the system,” said Mackie. “Obviously, if everyone does that, I think we’ll be successful.”

Right winger Philip Lane was expected to miss all three weekend games with a concussion incurred in a 3-0 home-ice win over the Plymouth Whalers on Jan. 19.

Defenceman Zach Bell is sidelined with an upper-body injury suffered from a check into the boards by Scott Laughton at Oshawa, while Alex O’Neil has an upper-body injury resulting from a second-period fight with Emerson Clark in the same game.