Before the playoffs, Dylan Strome and his Erie Otters paid tribute to the franchise’s only previous OHL championship team.
Periodically, OHL players go in for the peroxide-blond dye job in order to bond for the playoffs. The Otters’ captain and Arizona Coyotes top prospect and his teammates didn’t do so to directly copy the 2002 Otters, who went in for the early-career Eminem look, as was the style at the time. Yet doing so jibes with Strome carrying a torch in Erie, which is ahead of the pesky Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds 2-1 going into Wednesday’s Game 4 of the Western Conference semifinal.
“We got mullets last year, and blond hair was thrown out there,” says Strome, who has seven goals and 13 points across seven playoff games. “We found a hair salon to do it for about 40 bucks. It was a good time… There’s a lot of orange [hair], but mostly blond. It was something to connect us more as a group and the ’02 team did it too.”
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Strome, of course, is connected to his predecessors who wore the ‘C’ for the Otters’ previous two 100-point teams, a couple fellows named Connor who debuted in the NHL this season. Connor Brown and Connor McDavid each earned the OHL most outstanding player award as the stars of talented teams that were denied the ultimate post-season prize, something the Otters are out to redress.
“They were two obviously really good leaders and took our team to really far places,” says Strome, the 6-foot-3, 194-pound puck-protecting pivot. “Connor Brown and I were pretty close my first year. He taught me a lot. He really was a competitor. He hates losing more than anyone I’ve ever seen. Every game and every practice, every drill he wanted to be the best and it showed with the Red Tilson Trophy.
“Connor McDavid was my best friend last year with us going through the draft together and he being so much more mature than pretty much everyone in the whole league. It was good for us to connect and learn from him. I think coach [Kris Knoblauch] knew I would be coming back and it would be my turn.”
The ‘Hounds are proving to be a handful. The Soo’s last-minute 3-2 win on Monday means, surprisingly, the 1 vs. 7 matchup might end up being the only non-sweep of the second round.
“They have a lot of speed, a lot of good puck-moving defencemen,” Knoblauch says. “They’re not giving us much room. We have to not worry about what the Greyhounds are doing and what we have to worry about is playing our best, because we do have to play our best to beat the Greyhounds.”
The outside expectation for the post-McDavid Otters, even with Arizona opting to keep Strome in the OHL, was that they would slide down the standings. The line of succession Knoblauch had set up in Erie, where the supporting cast become secondary leaders and eventually primary leaders, was somewhat overlooked.
“Dylan understands the contributions of the alumni,” says Knoblauch, who has reached at least third round in three of his four full seasons as a major junior head coach. “He got the opportunity as a rookie [in 2012-13] to play with [Washington Capitals winger] Andre Burakovsky and Adam Pelech and Connor Brown. They laid the groundwork for a lot of the success that we’re now having.
“Dylan is a good leader and an exceptional hockey player. A lot of that has to do with the experience. When Dylan is gone, I hope [current rookies] Brett Neumann and Vanya Lodnia feel the same way.”
McDavid averaged 1.8 points per game over three seasons and playoffs in an Erie uniform. (Alex D’Addese)
Strome, through no small amount of collaboration with 50-goal scorer Alex DeBrincat, slightly increased his points per game in the regular season from 1.90 to 1.98, even with a higher quality of competition.
“How our team is going is usually how Dylan is playing,” Knoblauch says. “When he is leading the charge and composed showing the guys ‘I’ve got this’ it’s such a calming effect on the entire team.
“There’s so much more focus on him this year. He’s getting all the top defensive pairings and shutdown centremen and he won the scoring title last year, but his points per game is even better.”
Erie is unique as an OHL contender since 23 of 24 players, with overage winger Jake Marchment as the lone exception, were developed in-house as priority selection picks. That attests to both the scouting acuity of GM Dave Brown and how well Knoblauch and his staff coach up players. Also, every OHL champion team in the past 20 seasons has had a 19-year-old or overage captain.
Strome, who is in his 18-year-old season, has a sense of history regarding the Otters franchise and what it was like during its nadir, not too long ago. Few in Erie ever would have imagined the local shinny ensemble would join the short list of CHL teams that have had three consecutive 50-win years. This season, it took Erie beating the London Knights in the regular-season finale for their 52nd win to get first overall and home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs.
“Guys like Betzer [winger Nick Betz] and [goalie Devin] Williams bring up the 10-win season, the 19-win season,” Strome says. “Personally, I’ve been on three 50-win teams, those guys went through a tougher spell. After the London game, coach came in and said, ‘you might not realize how special this is, but ask the guys who have been here the years prior.’
“You want to throw everything on the line for the guys who were here for the dark days, and now we’re sort of in, I guess, the golden age of the Erie Otters. Hopefully we can find a way to win that championship and bring it back to Erie, like it was in 2002.”
Erie has five NHL draft picks, fewest among the four series-leading teams. Part of where Strome finds his motivation is from seeing how his teammates dig out for the playoff grind.
“A guy like [rookie forward] Christian Girhiny, he weighs 150 pounds and he’s not very tall and if you looked at him you wouldn’t think he plays in the OHL,” says Strome, who will have his second crack at making the Coyotes full-time come September. “But he’s a big part of our team and I think that’s a credit to our coaching staff.
“We’ve built up guys for the past couple years. That’s what makes it so special. A guy like [19-year-old defenceman] Darren Raddysh, he’s played against first lines for two, almost three years now. He hasn’t signed a contract, but if someone watches our team, they see how good he is.”
Erie was in a pseudo-playoff before the post-season, since it had to hold off Mitch Marner and late-charging London Knights to earn the Midwest Division title and home ice. Strome says that introduced the younger Otters to playoff hockey.
“The crowd definitely wanted that regular-season division title and the crowd was crazy and the game was crazy,” he recalls. “London had won like 10 in a row. We had had a couple stinker games, we had lost to Flint. That helped really build a playoff-like atmosphere. I think it was good for the young guys to be in that environment where the crowd is really going.”
Now the Otters are looking to get going against the Greyhounds.
“Our teams are very similar in that we’re both young but good with the puck, very poised,” Strome says.
Not everyone expected Soo-Erie to be a series. Then again, not everyone expected Strome would keep Erie atop the league.