OHL Alumni Central

The Graz 99ers of Austria’s Erste Bank Eishockey Liga have bolstered their blue line for 2011-12 with two Ontario Hockey League alumni. Cole Jarrett comes from Japan and Dustin VanBallegooie played the past three seasons in Denmark.

Cole Jarrett played four seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 1999-00 to 2002-03, all with the Plymouth Whalers. He proved his offensive abilities in his final season with 55 points in 58 regular season games for the Whalers. Undrafted, he was picked up by the Bridgeport Sound Tigers of the American Hockey League and played seasons with the New York Islanders affiliate, appearing in one game with the NHL club in 2005-06.

2006-07 saw Cole jump the Atlantic to play in Germany’s Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL) with Eisbaren Berlin. Since, he was played in Finland, Sweden and Japan. He played for Graz two years ago before jumping to the Aisa League of Hockey last season, playing for Tohoku Free Blades. Tohoku was to play for the league championship when the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit. Tohoku was named co-champion with Jarrett leading the league in goals and points for defensemen.

Thought of highly in Graz, Jarrett starts the 2011-12 season as team captain. Graz finished sixth out of ten teams in 2010-11, one game over .500 and made a quick quarter-final exit. They’ll need the defensive help if they plan to take on Salzburg, champions 4 of the past 5 years, who have a tandem of London Knights in Danny Bois and Daniel Erlich.

Dustin VanBallegooie scored 23 goals from the point over four seasons in the Ontario Hockey League between 2000-01 and 2003-04. In his first season in Denmark, Dustin scored 17 to lead all defensemen. In fact, over his three years with Sonderjysk in Denmark, VanBallegooie led the league’s blueliners in goals each year.

Dustin started his Ontario Hockey League career with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds and played for the Oshawa Generals and Owen Sound Attack before finishing with the Toronto St. Michael’s Majors. Undrafted, VanBallegooie played three seasons in the East Coast Hockey League with the Fresno Falcons (with an 11 game call-up to the AHL’s Bridgeport Sound Tigers in 2006-07) before heading to Europe. Dustin played one season in Germany’s DEL with Duisburg before heading to Denmark.

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