Followers of the Ontario Hockey League are almost resigned to the idea that a few teams are always going to be there: London foremost, with Kitchener and Windsor in the conversation. Maybe Guelph bubbles up, but the Storm don’t quite wield that same clout. Drake or Marcus Stroman can go on about the 416 but in the OHL the power corridor runs down the 401.
It just might be that the 402 will work it’s way into the conversation, however. Make the turn in London and at the west end of that highway, before you hit Port Huron, you’ll find the Sarnia Sting. Even though the Sting have turned out a few draft topping talents (Stamkos, Yakupov, Galchenyuk) they have been in the OHL’s second division or its third tier for much of their history.
Stamkos finished his Sting career with 100 goals in 124 regular-season games before going first-overall in the 2008 NHL Entry Draft.(CP/Dave Reginek)
Some thought that was the franchise’s ceiling. Some thought that the ownership of the Ciccarellis, Bob and Larry, were content just to ice a team and ceded the top slots to the established powers in the league. The Ciccarellis, along with their Hockey Hall of Fame brother Dino, had bought out the Newmarket franchise and moved it to Sarnia 20 years ago and won precisely zero Western Conference titles. When they sold the team to former NHLer Derian Hatcher and David Legwand of the Buffalo Sabres, fans might have hoped for something better. And it seems those hopes have some real foundation.
Yeah, the Sting were more competitive this year than most others, even though they were knocked out of the first round by the Soo Greyhounds with a heartbreaking loss in Game 7 in Sarnia. But you need only to look at last weekend’s OHL Priority Draft, when GM Nick Sinclair took some big swings, to get a sense that there’s a significant shift in culture and expectations with the Sting. And if those swings pay off, then the elite in the Western Conference might just have got more crowded.
In the past, London, Kitchener and Windsor could take risks with the tough-to-sign prospects, usually top U.S. players—those committed to play for the USA Hockey Program. (The program was in Ann Arbor until it moved to Plymouth and the former home of the OHL Whalers last season.)
With the 15th pick in the first round, Sinclair selected Tyler Weiss, a 16-year-old North Carolina native who played for the Don Mills Flyers this season. One of the most skilled forwards in the draft, Weiss would have been no gimme to sign with an OHL team: He’s committed to go to the under-17 team in Plymouth and Boston University down the line. London, Kitchener and Windsor have a habit of closing the deals on the tough-to-signs. Sinclair sounded optimistic about Weiss wearing a Sting sweater, if not next season than some point down the line.
“We were in a position where we can take a look at the long run,” Sinclair said. “We’re returning a lot of players [including 2015 NHL first-rounder Pavel Zacha and Travis Konecny] and we’ll probably have four open spots with players from our ’99 draft [last year’s priority draft] competing to fill them. We did our homework on Tyler and we’ve talked to him and to [his family advisor] Darren Ferris.”
After a slow start in Montreal, Galchenyuk has developed into a first-line centre. (Terry Wilson/OHL Images)
Sinclair believes that a year with USA Hockey’s under-17 program will be “a great benefit to Tyler’s development.” In fact it would be a placement that you’d prefer to any Tier II program. And though he didn’t come out and say, he wouldn’t be the only GM in the league who’d think that Weiss, at a listed 5-feet-10 and 144 pounds, might be better prepared to skate in the OHL after a year of strength work and growth. Given that the Sting didn’t have a pick in the second round, you’d have to presume that Sinclair and the Sting must be pretty confident that they’ll be able to get Weiss into the fold.
The first-rounder was the only seemingly high-risk-high-reward picks the Sting made. In the fourth, Sarnia drafted defenceman Mattias Samuelsson, the son of former NHL veteran Kjell Samuelsson. Sinclair believes Samuelsson, a New Jersey native, has all the tools to be a first-round NHL Draft pick in a couple of seasons. Like Weiss, Samuelsson is committed to the USA Hockey’s program next season and to the NCAA, in his case the University of Michigan. Sinclair and Hatcher will be spending a lot of nights driving from Sarnia to Plymouth to keep tabs on the players that they’d like to be a big part of the Sting’s future.
The change in team ownership is the key to the Sting’s belief that they can compete with the likes of the 401 powers when it comes to the tough signings. It’s easier for players, parents and agents to believe in Sarnia with Derian Hatcher as both owner and coach. “Everybody knows [his] reputation,” Sinclair says. “He played 1,000 NHL games. He was captain of a Stanley Cup winner. And he’s with the team every day.
“He’s involved in every way and you know there’s not going to be a coaching change during the season or anything like that. He knows the agents. He’s really the game-changer here.”
And, Sinclair claims, the results are already showing. “At [this year’s] Prospects Game, two of our players Jakob Chychyrun and Jordan Kyrou graded out first and second in the on-ice testing,” he says. “We’re showing that we can do a great job developing players.”
Even more than London and Kitchener, Sarnia is geographically positioned to be an attractive option for U.S. prospects, Sinclair says, “especially the Michigan kids who are so close.” That Hatcher is a native of Sterling Heights, Mich., only makes the case the Sting will mount to kids the other side of the bridge that much more compelling. And if Hatcher and Sinclair can reel in those players who had gravitated to the Western Conference powers for so long, then the team on the 402 can shake things up in a hurry.