OJHL Transactions Notebook #1: My teams in June

OJHL transactions come in all shapes and sizes. Often they are of the player-for-cash variety, in the absence of draft picks like in major junior, and most general managers would rather deal a player of real quality to another league, or at least out of division, rather than risk facing him in a key game down the stretch or in the playoffs.

This off-season so far, bringing players in from Junior B, or sending them back there, has been the norm around the league. Teams like the Oakville Blades, North York Rangers, Wellington Dukes, and Trenton Golden Hawks had a lot of success last year finding veteran players from the more quality Junior ‘B’ outfits, so digging for that next ‘later-blooming’ gem has been the name of the game so far.

We have also seen teams off-load to Junior B, bringing in cash from those wealthy, quality outfits that provide no risk of on-ice competition.

With the off-season transaction market in the OJHL in full swing, I have decided to put together a little notebook of my thoughts concerning what has gone on so far.

I’ll start with the three teams I know the most about.

The first, and easiest team for me to talk about is the Oakville Blades. I was around one of their mid-summer split-squad games, which was really quite competitive and high tempo for a summer game I might add, and I was impressed with what GM Mike Daley and Coach Mike Tarantino and staff have started to build. It is no secret to anyone that star talent the likes of Patrick Kudla and Josh Kosack will be highly sought out by next-level clubs, and that Tyler Rollo has his heart set on being a fulltime Peterborough Pete next year. Captain Ryan Garvey will skip his overage year and head to St. Lawrence University next year, while the big-bodied, highly-touted defender Ian Blacker has rightfully signed and committed himself to the OHL’s London Knights for 2016-17. So with all that in mind, Daley and company have done well to move on, and take whatever fallback they get from that treasure trove as bonus.

The Oakville transactions that have been reported signal a clear design to be a far less enjoyable team to face in the physicality department. Tyler Hildebrandt from St. Catherine’s Junior B is a big boy with a smooth stride, and by all accounts is a late bloomer with a huge offensive upside, who will not have any trouble getting around Sixteen Mile Sports Complex’s big ice surface.

Dealing young Eric Holland to Aurora is certainly painful, as he is a very talented kid with a lot of potential, but it makes sense in the overall scheme of things to bring in the versatile and truculent Nicholas Turenko in exchange. The well-built 6-foot-2 veteran Turenko says he is most comfortable playing defence, but I’ve seen him play centre plenty of times, and he has done well at that as a two-way ‘East Division-type’ player (as an aside, I guess OJHL people use ‘East-Division-type player’ as a term meaning ‘he’s not a nice guy on the ice’). I’ve also heard nothing but great things about Turenko’s character.

The last kid to be reported heading to Oakville so far this off-season is the former Strathroy Junior B defender Jeff Clarke. Another big, 6-foot-2 physical type, the former Elgin-Middlesex Chief was a well-thought-of pick of the London Knights (sounds like Ian Blacker…), and is only a 1999-birth year. I know coach Tarantino will move the pairings around a lot all year this season coming up; but I expect big things from the recent Lake Superior State commit Mike Mannara, and the big-bodied presence of Clarke appears a strong fit beside either him, or the equally fleet-of-foot Brayden Sampson.

The Blades have a great facility and organization, and Daley, with his staff, does a very nice job recruiting kids and making deals, so I’m sure there is more adding to come. I did see a whole bag load of monsters in Oakville red, white, and blue at their split-squad game.

Neither the North York Rangers nor the Toronto Patriots, the other teams that I have ties to, have revealed anything so far, with the exception of the Pats adding former Toronto Jr. Canadiens bench boss Mario Cicchillo behind the bench, so anything I could say would be pure speculation.

All I can say about the Pats is that I know for an absolute fact that Coach Cicchillo is a huge believer in the games of Lee Lapid and Eric Eremita, the two guys he sent to his new club in the middle of the year last year. I have seen good things from both, and can especially attest to the very high quality of their respective characters – they are both very good kids. No idea if the likes of Jeremy Pullara, Mario Ferraro, or Louis di Matteo – the holdovers from the 2015 championship – are back.

The Rangers lost a bunch of guys to graduation, including leaders like Jeremy Szabo, Michael Morgan, Tyler Currie, and Gianluca Baggetta, but a new group will keep the club very competitive this season. What can motivated 20-year-olds Keegan Blasby, Jeremie Lintner, and Shawn Tessier accomplish this year? I can’t wait to find out. The only transaction I know from them is that they’ve added 17-year-old winger Jake Dale from Blyth Academy Prep.