Nearly 30 years after the OHL’s last try at expansion didn’t lead to glowing results, the league is in an entirely different place.
With a commissioner entering his third season on the job and a new development landscape helping create much-increased interest in roster spots, the league would like another shot to grow its footprint.
“I’d personally like to see us grow by four more (teams) perhaps in the next five to 10 seasons,” OHL commissioner and former CFL running back Bryan Crawford, hired in 2024 after running golf’s RBC Canadian Open, said in an interview with Sportsnet this week.
The NCAA’s decision to open the door to CHL players starting last season has created player-retention challenges for Canada’s three major-junior leagues, but at the same time has opened the door for previously uninterested players to enter the OHL, WHL or QMJHL before potentially playing at a U.S. college.
The 20-team OHL had about 120 players join last season who wouldn’t have been a part of the league before the NCAA rule change.
That’s the equivalent of four full rosters in a league that has captured the past three Memorial Cup titles.
“Part of the challenge is there aren’t facilities just sitting there waiting,” Crawford said of expansion. “So some of the places that could provide a great opportunity to be an OHL market, especially here in Ontario, you’ve got to build buildings, and that takes time. They’re projects that are managed in years, not months, and they are big investments by communities and it takes a lot of effort.
“But we’ve made really good progress. There are some communities that are very, very engaged and very, very interested, public-private partnerships and those sorts of things. We’re really confident we’ll see an opportunity to grow our league.”
So where are the target markets?
Crawford makes no secret of a desire to have the Oshawa Generals and Brampton Steelheads be joined by other teams in the Greater Toronto Area, even though the OHL’s last expansion of three teams in the GTA (1997, '98) has seen none of those teams remain in their original markets.
Vaughan, just north of Toronto, and Burlington, a bit west, both have explored the possibility in recent years.
“Toronto proper has lots of challenges, it’s such a competitive market,” Crawford said. “I’ve lived that running the Canadian Open and so I think that when we think about it, to be able to build a presence around and circling the GTA, we think about Brampton and Oshawa now, what we could doing in York Region (where Vaughan is located) and Halton (Burlington), it could be really appealing for us. It’s the biggest hockey market in the world, and there’s certainly opportunity for communities that have their own identity.”
The league also has talked to Chatham (in southwestern Ontario) and is holding two neutral-site games in Cornwall (a former OHL and QMJHL market in eastern Ontario) next season.
Then, there’s the U.S. An idea to have two USHL teams join the OHL didn’t work out a couple years ago, but there’s no doubt the OHL would love to have company for its three American teams in Michigan and Pennsylvania, especially considering the recent interest from American players.
Of course, that likely would be big political issue with USA Hockey and the USHL, which may or may not be solvable.
The mayor of Niagara Falls, N.Y., Robert Restaino, told the Buffalo News on Thursday that he has had discussions with Crawford about having an OHL team play in a proposed new arena in the border city.
“I think there’s lots of opportunities there for us to see the league grow both with teams and American players,” Crawford said. “We’ve seen an influx last year in our draft. We see more and more American players who grow up with the aspiration of playing in the NCAA and now they can play in the best junior league in the world and still achieve their aspirations of playing NCAA hockey. We need to make sure that pathway is there for them if they make our league deeper and stronger.”
USHL goes west
Crawford said there have been no recent discussions between the OHL and USHL after some wondered if there would be a path to work together.
The USHL, meanwhile, made its own news this week, announcing a memorandum of understanding to establish clubs in Arizona, California and Nevada.
The 16-team USHL is primarily in the midwest, so how this works with transportation and logistics will be worth monitoring.
Since the NCAA rule change, a number of top USHL players have jumped to the CHL. This is a sign that the USHL has designs on maintaining top prospects.
Back to the Hat
Twins Markus and Liam Ruck told Mike Morreale of NHL.com this week they plan to return to the Medicine Hat Tigers next season.
The WHL's leading scorers are both top-two-round prospects for this month's NHL Draft and are not following several others in joining the NCAA next season.
The Tigers should be a force in the WHL next season after making the Western Conference final this year, despite losing projected NHL No. 1 overall pick Gavin McKenna to Penn State.
The Tigers also have a couple of good 2028 NHL Draft prospects in forwards Shaeffer Gordon-Carrol and Noah Davidson.
Storm warning
The Guelph Storm started to build up their roster for hosting the Memorial Cup next season by acquiring Tampa Bay Lightning prospect forward Ethan Czata from the Niagara IceDogs this week.
Czata is a very good piece. But there's plenty of work ahead for the Storm, who lost Pittsburgh Penguins defenceman Quinn Beauchesne to Boston College last month.
The Storm were not an OHL contender last season and must bolster their roster to have a chance to win the Memorial Cup on home ice. The Kelowna Rockets didn't do enough this time around, going winless in the tournament after bowing out in the second round of the WHL playoffs.
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