Gare Joyce

Gare Joyce writes regularly on junior hockey for Sportsnet.ca. A veteran journalist, Joyce is the author of Future Greats and Heartbreaks: A Year Undercover in the Secret World of NHL Scouts, When the Lights Went Out: How One Brawl Ended Hockey's Cold War and Changed the Game and Sidney Crosby: Taking the Game by Storm. He also writes for ESPN The Magazine, espn.com and several Canadian magazines.

While all eyes were locked on London following the OHL trade deadline, it was another deal that has made the greatest impact.

After the national holiday -- the NHL’s trade deadline day -- it seems like an appropriate time to consider the equivalent in the Ontario Hockey League. The O’s deadline day is almost two months past, so were not speculating about what might happen, but really assessing the impact of last-minute shopping on contenders. I’d bank on one significant parallel between the O and the NHL: The deals featuring the biggest names and making the most noise are not necessarily the most influential.

There’s no doubt about the biggest names and loudest noise in the O. That was the trade of John Tavares and others from also-ran Oshawa to perennial contender London. The idea was that the Knights would make a real run at the Windsor Spitfires, the nation’s No.1-ranked team throughout most of the season. It hasn’t worked out that way. It’s hard to say that the Knights are even a better team with the addition of the league’s most-gifted offensive player. Windsor has won twice in the Knights’ barn, the second time easier than the first, and pretty well ran the table -- it’s news if the Spitfires lose twice in a month.

Meanwhile, the Knights have staggered around: 7-5-1 since Feb. 1. They’re not striking fear into the hearts of anyone. Michael Del Zotto, who came over to London with Tavares, has struggled on the London blue line. Never mind making the Spitfires sweat in the Western Conference final because the Knights will be in a battle to make it that far.

So far the deal that has made the most impact has been on the other side of the O’s regional divide: Brampton’s pick-up of goaltender Thomas McCollum from Guelph.

I made it out to Belleville Saturday night for Brampton’s showdown with the Bulls in what was the biggest game of the season for both teams. Brampton had beaten Niagara 6-0 the night before with McCollum getting the shutout, while the Bulls looked listless in a loss at St. Mikes. Clearly the Bulls were looking a game ahead. A Belleville win and the Bulls would move to eight points ahead of Brampton in the race for the conference’s top seed -- with the clock running down on the season, that amounted to a virtual clinching of home-ice advantage through three rounds. A Brampton win and the Battalion would close to within four and with two games in hand -- in other words, a dead sprint to the finish.

It turned out to be a great evening of junior hockey, a 4-1 win for the visitors. In Brampton’s biggest game of the year, McCollum was their best player.

The game was tight through two periods. Evgeni Grachev scored for the green team eight minutes in and Brandon Mashinter tied it for the home side three minutes or so later. Thereafter McCollum kept the Battalion in the game. Belleville’s best chance: The Bulls’ leading scorer, Eric Tangredi, had a wide-open net and plenty of time but McCollum robbed him with a scrambling, sprawling, diving save with paddle outstretched on the goal line. A few shifts into the second period the Bulls were looking at a full two minutes with a two-man advantage but a moment later defenceman P.K. Subban took an unnecessary roughing penalty in the neutral zone to give Brampton life.

The Battalion scored three unanswered goals in the third period, with Cody Hodgson making some great plays, picking up a goal, an assist and a chorus of "MVP" from Brampton fans who had bussed in for the game. Stephon Thorne and Anthony Peluso -- a big, physical winger who was picked up from the Soo on the deadline -- also ended up in the scoring column. The academy at the Yardmen Arena voted Grachev the first star; he made a spectacular pass to Hodgson on the clincher. Still, McCollum’s globe- and blocker-prints were all over the win: 27 saves on 28 shots doesn’t start to tell the story. Belleville going 0-for-9 on the power play is a better indicator and, as always, the goaltender was the best penalty killer.

The 19-year-old McCollum came over from Guelph in exchange for two rookies -- goaltender Brandon Foote and winger Josh Shalla -- and the Battalion’s second-round pick in 2010 and 2011. The trade was a big boost for the Battalion before McCollum set foot in the Brampton dressing room.

"We were all excited when we found out about Thomas coming over," Hodgson said after Saturday night’s win. "You know going into these games that he doesn’t just give you a chance but can steal a game."

McCollum was ecstatic when he found out he had been traded. "I was at a team-mate’s house when I got the text message," he said. "It was a chance to do something special this season."

It was, as McCollum honestly admitted, not his first chance to do something this season. He was the goalie for the U.S. team that flat-lined at the world junior tournament and lost to Slovakia in the quarters. I tried to be polite in broaching the subject with the native of Sanborn, N.Y., sure that it would be an interview-killer, but McCollum to his credit was up front about it.

"I wasn’t good at the world juniors, so coming to Brampton was a second chance for me," he said.

The numbers do the talking. Since the trade he has posted a 1.80 GAA and .936 save percentage. The only goaltender in that range is Belleville’s Mike Murphy, but his stats took a bit of a hit in the loss to Brampton (21 saves on 25 shots). McCollum is better technically than Murphy, who seems to get by on sheer will and instinct. Scouts also regard six-foot-two 205-pound McCollum as more athletic than the boyish-looking Murphy, who is five-foot-11 … maybe. On a given night, either netminder can steal a game. Still, it is understandable how McCollum ended up as Detroit’s first-round pick in 2008 and Murphy was still around when Carolina picked him in the sixth round.

It wasn’t quite that this season would have been a complete loss for McCollum if he had stayed in Guelph -- he was playing well enough with the Storm (2.23, .926, 17-10) but management there decided that he couldn’t steal eight games, which is just about what it was going to take to make the conference final in the very tough west.

As it sits right now, he might not have to win a game by himself for his team to make the OHL final -- or at least not more than a couple. For instance, he wasn’t even really tested when the Battalion routed Tavares and London 5-1 in the Bunker a couple of weeks back.

It’s easy to see what Detroit and Brampton liked in McCollum beyond his athleticism and stats. He seems a pretty grounded character. He isn’t looking in the rearview mirror -- if he can shrug off losing to Canada and Slovakia at the world juniors he has something going for him. And he isn’t pre-occupied with making The Show.

"Detroit told me that I’ll be going to the minors and it’s going to be seasons," McCollum said. "It’s not what a young player wants to hear but their record speaks for itself. They’ve had success with players by not bringing them up before they’re ready."

McCollum has things in just the right perspective. Unlike some top prospects, he is not distracted by making the step up to the pros. All in good time. He has the best possible support around him.

"Every day I’m text messaging with (Detroit’s head of player development) Jiri Fischer," he says. "Once a week I work out with Jim Bedard (the Wings’ goaltending coach)."

Any player who lands with a contender has to consider himself lucky. McCollum couldn’t ask for more and Brampton couldn’t have done any better than to get him.

Stuff that fell out of my notebook:

I had a conversation with Louis Leblanc, a point-a-game centre with Omaha of the USHL and No. 18 on NHL Central Scouting’s list of North American skaters in its mid-winter rankings. Leblanc is one of the more curious cases in the draft. A Montreal native, he opted to go to the USHL because he’s going to Harvard next year.

"I had a couple of chances to go to prep schools in the U.S. this season," Leblanc told me. "That didn’t work out and staying close to home to play junior AAA wouldn’t have been good … that level in Quebec is not as strong as it is in Ontario, Alberta and B.C. I told the teams in the Q that I wasn’t interested in playing major junior because I was going to college and there weren’t any options that compared with Harvard."

Val d’Or thought he was bluffing and burned a first-round pick on him. You’d think that if the team did its homework -- Leblanc is the son of a chemist and a music teacher -- Val d’Or (of all teams, the most geographically remote) would have figured it out. Not just the son of college-educated parents, but an honour student who was making visits to the campus.

"I want to study economics at Harvard, maybe for only a couple of years if the NHL is an opportunity, maybe for more, three or four years, if it works out that way," Leblanc said. "Some people think the league that Harvard plays in (the ECAC) isn’t as strong as the conferences out west but I think you’re going to become a hockey player no matter where you’re going to play."

I asked one NHL scout about Leblanc and got a shoulder shrug. "He has some skill but it’s so hard to say given the level of play he’s in there with," the scout told me. "A bit of a mystery and he might still be after a couple of years at an Ivy League school."

Not that the Q is asking for it but Leblanc’s deux centimes: "The Q should really look at the academic options for players. I think that they’re going to lose more players because they want to play NCAA."

Overheard in the scouts’ lounge: On Tavares: "really up and down in the last few weeks" ; On the Q: "the best draft-eligible is a Russian and the best Quebec-born kid is in Omaha, the league’s in trouble -- a few good teams, Drummondville for sure, but top-heavy, the bottom half of the league is very weak." … I thought Mississauga St. Mike’s looked solid at home against Belleville Friday night and might be a potentially nettlesome opponent against everybody but Windsor who, if you follow the chalk, looks like a second-round opponent. Looking back at it, St. Mike’s carried a one-goal lead into the last 10 minutes hosting the Spitfires in November before losing on a late goal by Andrei Loktionov. And I was in Windsor in January when the Majors hung around in a 5-3 loss. One scout’s read: "I don’t know if their goaltending is strong enough to really challenge the Spitfires."