The Ontario Hockey League season has boiled down to the Conference finals, two vastly different series. If you were making book, you’d have to say the most talked about team, the Erie Otters would be the longest shot to still be playing in a couple of weeks time. The other three, the Soo, Oshawa and Brampton, you’d all give better odds of making it to the Memorial Cup.
The Otters, of course, are the most talked about team simply because they have in their lineup wunderkind Connor McDavid and, in the best supporting draft-eligible role, Dylan Strome. If Erie falls in the Western Conference final to the Soo Greyhounds, it will be characterized as McDavid’s failure, unfairly. The Otters aren’t built to win this year in the same way that the Soo is.
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The Greyhounds don’t have a McDavid of their own (no one other than Erie does), but they have a lot of starry talents and all of it is older. Most prominent among them is defenceman Darnell Nurse, McDavid’s teammate on the gold medal team at the world juniors and his future teammate with the Edmonton Oilers next season.
Nurse and Jared McCann, a Vancouver first-rounder a year ago, have been in the fold for a while and been mainstays of a rebuild over the past three seasons, but the Soo went all in this season and traded for two other NHL first-rounders from a year ago, left winger Nick Ritchie (Anaheim pick, from Peterborough) and defenceman Anthony DeAngelo (Tampa pick, from Sarnia) and picked up forward Justin Bailey, who was selected in the second round by Buffalo a couple of years ago.
That is a classic example of an organization recognizing that this season is a chance for success that comes around once every five years if at all. Nurse, Ritchie and Bailey will be in the pros next year and so might the others. Ditto coach Sheldon Keefe who is bound to hear the phone ring about pro jobs, whether in the NHL or AHL.
The Otters gave the host Greyhounds a scare last night—the Soo ran out to a 3-0 lead before McDavid scored a natural hat trick to tie it up. The object lesson is that you can take two-minute minors when playing Erie, never mind double-minors that gave McDavid time and space to work his magic. You have to believe the older and savvy Western Conference top-seed Greyhounds can slow McDavid in five-on-five play but he’s going to hurt you on the power play. No way you can avoid it.
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That said, the Soo was average—maybe at best average—in a 6-3 win Thursday night and McDavid’s hat trick was but a speed bump. The Greyhounds have 10 players who scored 23 or more goals this OHL season (when you factor in the output of players picked up in trade). Ritchie has 11 goals and 10 assists and is plus-14 in nine playoff games. Even though the Otters managed to out-shoot the Greyhounds 42-32, the Soo could easily sweep this series just like they did the first two rounds. It might be great for hockey if McDavid can make the Memorial Cup, but the stars just aren’t lining up the right way for that to happen.
On the right side of the draw (geographically anyway), Oshawa stands as the favorite against North Bay in a rematch of last year’s East final. The star power isn’t up there with what will be on the ice in the Soo and Erie, but in some way it might be a more intriguing match up, certainly the one that you could see going deep. Then again, that’s what everyone thought last year when the favored Generals fell to the Battalion in four games.
Whenever you hear about an upset along these lines you suspect that a hot goaltender and a weak one were the difference-makers for better or worse respectively. Not how it played out last year though. North Bay’s Jake Smith was good but only as good as he had to be, no masked marvel—he didn’t steal a game against the Generals.
I talked to Oshawa’s top player Michael Dal Colle after the series and asked him how North Bay pulled off not just an upset but a one-sided one. He said that the Battalion shut out the lights and didn’t let them breathe and everything else that might induce claustrophobia. “They played their system and stuck with it every shift, as tight as any team we faced all year,” Dal Colle said.
In boxing terms, you’d type North Bay as a counter-puncher—constantly mindful of defence, patiently picking spots, scoring just enough, waiting for frustrations on the other side to mount.
Oshawa ran away with Eastern Conference this season and physically dominated opponents—you rarely see a 6foot-6 winger like Hunter Smith peel off on a line change and another guy just as big take his place, that being Michael McCarron. If you’re 16 and breaking into the league, seeing that is enough to make you wonder exactly what you signed on for and how can you get out of it.
Fact is, though, North Bay matches up better against the Generals than any other team in the league. The Battalion have plenty of size won’t play scared. They can play the same grinding style. They can wait for the Generals to take a couple of penalties on big hits gone wrong and then make Oshawa skate four-on-five or worse.
And if you’re looking at last year as a blueprint, consider two significant factors that weigh heavily in North Bay’s favor: 1. The 2014 North Bay team was sort of a goalless wonder, scratching out goals on hopes and prayers, but this year’s bunch has scoring spread nicely across its top two lines, Nick Paul and Ryan Kujawinski showing the way; 2. Smith had a .905 save percentage in last year’s playoffs and was below .900 in the 2014-15 regular season, but has raised his game this spring and is sitting at a .923 save percentage through nine games.
You still have to give a slight edge to Oshawa but don’t put too much weight in the fact that the Generals finished 23 points ahead of North Bay. Count on this series going six games, no matter what. Styles make fights and North Bay is exactly the last team Oshawa would want to face.