OHL Alumni Central

Dustin VanBallegooie played four seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 2000-01 to 2003-04 and played on four different OHL teams. His first full season in the Ontario Hockey League was the only spent with just one team. He began his OHL career with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds.

VanBallegooie’s second season was split between the Greyhounds and the Oshawa Generals. Season three started with the Generals and ended with the Owen Sound Attack. His final season started in Owen Sound and ended in Toronto with the St. Michael’s Majors.

Following his Ontario Hockey League career, Dustin played three seasons with the Fresno Falcons of the East Coast Hockey League. In his last season with the Falcons, 2006-07, VanBallegooie was called up to the American Hockey League’s Bridgeport Sound Tigers for eleven games.

In his middle season with Fresno, Dustin gathered 40 points off 13 goals and 27 assists in 69 games. This was good enough to earn VanBallegooie a spot at the ECHL all-star game and got him voted in as Fresno’s Top Defenseman. Fresno finished first in their division but lost out in the Conference finals.

After a season with Duisburg in Germany’s Deutsche Eishockey Liga in 2007-08, VanBallegooie made the shift to Denmark’s AL-Bank Ligaen and will be entering his third season with Sønderjysk EliteSport for the 2010-11 season.

Dustin has enjoyed great success in Denmark. In both his first two seasons with SønderjyskE, the team has won the Danish championship. Both seasons, Dustin has led the league’s defensemen in goal scoring. Both seasons, he has been an all-star. This past season, Dustin’s 40 points in 35 games was not only good enough to lead all defensemen but was good enough to tie him for seventh in the league in overall points.

His game changed along with the team’s as he went from fourth in the league in penalty minutes during the 2008-09 season to getting just a third of that season’s total in the 2009-10 season. SønderjyskE was the least penalized team in the AL-Bank Ligaen this past season.

An interesting note about SønderjyskE is that they are the only team in the AL-Bank Ligaen that plays on a home rink that is NHL regulation size. The rest of the teams in the league play on rinks that are standard IIHF size.

There is no direct link to Dustin VanBallegooie’s profile page on the SønderjyskE official website but if you go to the site and select Ishockey and Spillertrup, you will go to the team’s roster and you can click on Dustin’s name there.

Check out previous posts on Ontario Hockey League alumni playing in Denmark’s AL-Bank Ligaen:

Neal Martin

Russ Moyer

Neal Martin played in the Ontario Hockey League for four seasons from 1992-93 to 1995-96. He began his OHL career with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds but was traded midway through the 1993-94 season to the Sudbury Wolves. He finished out his OHL career on the blue line with the Wolves.

Neal has played on 12 different teams over his 14 year professional hockey career. While playing in North America, he was on the roster of teams in the ECHL, IHL, AHL and WPHL.

Since his move to Europe for the start of the 1999-00 season, he has played in Great Britain, Germany and Austria as well as Denmark, where he has spent the past two seasons. Neal Martin is a member of AaB in Denmark’s AL Bank Ligaen. The team plays out of Aalborg, Denmark.

Click here to view Neal Martin’s profile page on the AaB official website.

Check out this post on Russ Moyer, another OHL grad playing in Denmark.