Mike Murphy hasn’t missed a beat since graduating from the Ontario Hockey League. The Carolina Hurricanes prospect has been putting up great numbers between the pipes in the American Hockey League over the past two seasons, biding his time until he gets the call from the Hurricanes.

Murphy played four seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 2005-06 to 2008-09, all with the Belleville Bulls. Over the last two seasons, Mike was the Belleville Bulls. It was his stellar goaltending that had the team finish first in the Eastern Conference both seasons. He led Belleville to the Robertson Cup final in 2007-08 before losing in seven games to the Kitchener Rangers.

Because Kitchener was the host of the 2008 Memorial Cup, the Bulls were the fourth team in the tournament. Belleville lost out to Kitchener in the semi-final.

In both those last two seasons in the OHL, Murphy was the OHL Goaltender of the Year, an OHL First Team All-Star, a CHL All-Star, had the OHL’s best goals against average and save percentage. He also won the Dave Pinkney Trophy in his final season for the team with the lowest GAA.

Mike was selected by Carolina in the sixth round of the 2008 NHL Entry Draft, 165th overall. Murphy played last season with their AHL affiliate, the Albany River Rats. He switched to the Charlotte Checkers of the AHL this season as the Hurricanes switched affiliates. Over both seasons in the AHL, Murphy has maintained a GAA less than 3.00 and a save percentage over .900.

Check out Mike Murphy’s profile page at the Charlotte Checkers official website.

Jaroslav Janus during Slovakia's upset of the USA at the 2009 Under-20 World Juniors.

Recently, we featured the Ontario Hockey League grads currently playing for the ECHL’s Florida Everblades (click link to go to that article). At the time, there were five OHL alumni on the team. A sixth player, Jaroslav Janus, had been sent up to the AHL’s Norfolk Admirals at the time and has since been returned to Florida.

Janus played three seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 2007-08 to 2009-10, all with the Erie Otters. The Slovak goaltender played the bulk of the games for the team in his first two seasons and just a handful in 2009-10 as he spent half the season with Norfolk.

The season before coming to the Ontario Hockey League, Jaroslav played goal for Team Slovakia at the IIHF World Under-18 Tournament in which Slovakia finished fifth. In the 2009 Under-20 Championships, Janus led Slovakia to the Bronze medal game where they bowed out to Russia. Jaroslav was selected to the tournament’s All-Star Team.

Janus was selected in the sixth round of the 2009 NHL Entry Draft by the Tampa Bay Lightning, 162nd overall. He was also taken the same year in the second round of Russia’s KHL Draft by Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, 42nd overall. He has obviously chosen to remain in the Tampa Lightning organization, splitting his time between the AHL’s Admirals and the ECHL’s Everblades.

Check out profile page of Jaroslav Janus at the Florida Everblades official website.

Sudbury Wolves grad Serge Dubé wasn’t finished with hockey afterall. After the 2008-09 season, Dubé called it a career and headed to the Laredo Bucks front office. When injuries plagued the team this past February, Serge came back for two games to help the team out. Earlier this summer, Dubé made his intentions clear that he would indeed be back on the ice full-time for the Bucks during the 2010-11 season.

Serge played just one season in the Ontario Hockey League, 1998-1999, with the Sudbury Wolves. Dubé made a decent contribution from the blue line with 22 points in 60 games for the Wolves. Following his OHL career, Serge made a two year stop at the University of Moncton.

2002-03 marked the beginning for the very successful Laredo Bucks in the Central Hockey League. The team has failed to finish any lower than second place in the league’s Southeast Division. The team has been to the league playoff finals four times and has won the prize twice. Serge Dubé has been with the Bucks since day one.

Serge made two minor stops along the way during his professional hockey career. At the start of the 2004-05 season, Dubé tested the European waters, playing in Great Britain. After just eleven games, he was back in Texas for the rest of the 2004-05 season. The following season, 2005-06, Serge was called up to the San Antonio Rampage of the AHL for three games.

Dubé is currently Laredo’s all-time leader in games played and is second in all-time assists and points. Serge captained the team for the three seasons prior to his temporary retirement. He was named the CHL’s Most Outstanding Defenseman for the 2006-07 season and is a three time all-star.

Check out the Laredo Bucks official website.

Serge has his place on The Big List.

Need it. Need it. Got it. Need it.

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

The rosters for the OHL All-Star Classic Alumni game have been set. The game will be on February 2, 2010 in Kingston and will feature the Kingston alumni versus the OHL alumni. The OHL squad features some tough customers in Steve Thomas, Doug Gilmour, Alyn McCauley, Mark Osbourne and Warren Rychel. The Kingston squad ain’t so bad either…

For the full rosters, follow this link to a great Junior Hockey Blog, The World of Junior Hockey.