OHL Alumni Central

Mike Looby played five seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 2001-02 to 2005-06. He began his OHL career with the Brampton Battalion and called the Bunker home for two seasons. Looby spent the 2003-04 season with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds before heading to the Plymouth Whalers for the 2004-05 season. He split his final year between the Whalers and the Kingston Frontenacs.

After an early exit by the Frontenacs in Mike’s final OHL season (losing in the first round to the Sudbury Wolves in six games), it was off to the Central Hockey League’s Laredo Bucks. The Bucks won the CHL championship in 2005-06 and Looby played in 12 of the team’s playoff games, contributing a goal and two assists from the blue line.

Undrafted by an NHL club, Mike has spent most of his professional hockey career in the Central Hockey League. The exception was 2008-09 when he played in the East Coast Hockey League, split between the Dayton Bombers and the Gwinnett Gladiators. This past season, Mike played 54 games on the point for the CHL’s Wichita Thunder after starting the season with two games played for the Queen City Storm of the All-American Hockey League.

2011-12 brings about a major change in landscape for Looby. Mike will cross the Atlantic and play for Eaters Geleen in the Netherlands. This past season, Geleen finished sixth in the nine team Dutch elite league.

2010-11 was simply a great year for Ontario Hockey League grad Kevin Young. The former Brampton Battalion was honoured as the top defenseman in the Netherlands, contributing 65 points in 40 games. Late in the season, he joined the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs of the Central Hockey League and helped them win the Presidents Cup as playoff champions.

Kevin Young played one season in the Ontario Hockey League, 2002-03, after four years in the Western Hockey League. Young played 47 regular season games with the Battalion and contributed 43 points, earning him a nomination for the Max Kaminsky Trophy as the OHL’s top defenseman.

The following season, as a member of the University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds, Young was selected as the CIS rookie of the year and honoured with the Clare Drake Award. He was also a CIS First Team All-Star. He posted 29 points in 28 games from the blue line for UNB. He would play one more season with UNB before heading to Europe.

In his first season in Europe, 2005-06, Kevin was a big factor in the Nijmegen Devils winning the Dutch championship. Once again, Young contributed at more than a point per game pace throughout the regular season and playoffs.

He would go on to play a year in Great Britain’s EIHL and three in Germany’s 2.Bundesliga before returned to the Netherlands this past season with Eindhoven Kemphanen. As mentioned above, his 17 goals and 48 assists for 65 points in just 40 games earned him the league’s best defenseman award. In 2008-09, another OHL grad, Duncan Dalmao won the same award. Dalmao played three years in the Ontario Hockey League from 1995-96 to 1997-98 with the London Knights and Peterborough Petes.

Young’s 65 points was good enough for 10th position in the league. In high scoring Netherlands, there were two players with more than 100 points in 2010-11. American Phil Aucoin had 125 in just 44 games and Canadian T.J. Caig had 108 in 41 games.

The Netherlands likes Ontario Hockey League goaltenders. Two of the eight teams in the Eredivisie, the country’s elite hockey league, used OHL grads as their main keeper this season.

Matt Anthony played three years in the Ontario Hockey League from 2001-02 to 2003-04, all with the Windsor Spitfires. He played a backup role in his first two seasons. Anthony played the bulk of Windsor’s games in 2003-04, appearing in 54 with a goals against average of 3.00 and a save percentage of .902.

This is Matt’s third season with Eindhoven Kemphanen. This season, the team finished fifth out of eight teams during the regular season. Anthony’s 3.75 GAA was good enough for fourth in the highly offensive Eredivisie.

At 6’3″, Stephane Cesar is a radical contrast to Anthony who stands at 5’9″. Cesar played two seasons in the Ontario Hockey League as a backup in 2006-07 and 2007-08. Stephane appeared in nine games with the London Knights in 2006-07 and eight more in 2007-08 before being shipped to the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. In four games with the Greyhounds, Cesar posted great numbers with a 2.10 GAA and .921 save percentage.

This is Stephane’s second season in the Eredivisie. He played last season with Heerenveen Flyers and this season he’s the number one goalie for Nijmegen Devils. The Devils are the reigning Eredivisie champions and finished fourth out of the eight teams this season.

Matt Anthony’s profile can be found at the Eindhoven Kemphanen official website.

Stephane Cesar’s profile can be found at the Hijmegen Devils official website.

A few days ago, we featured another Ontario Hockey League grad playing in the Eredivisie, Marc Lefebvre.

Ontario Hockey League grad Marc Lefebvre began the 2010-11 season with the Zoetermeer Panthers in the Eredivisie, the elite hockey league of the Netherlands. The team went bankrupt after 12 games and Lefebvre was shifted to Eaters Geleen in the now eight team league.

Marc Lefebvre with the Elmira Jackals during the 2006-07 season.

Lefebvre played three seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 1999-00 to 2001-02. He played his first two seasons with the Ottawa 67′s and his final season was played in a Sarnia Sting jersey.

Undrafted by an NHL club, Marc made his way to Europe for the first time in the 2003-04 season, playing for the Sheffield Steelers of Great Britain’s EIHL. The team was regular season and playoff champion that season. Lefebvre played two seasons with Sheffield, one with the Coventry Blaze in 2005-06 and a season with the Edinburgh Capitals this past season.

Lefebvre played a season in France’s Ligue Magnus in 2007-08 with Epinal. His year in France was flanked by a season in the UHL with the Elmira Jackals and a season in the Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL) with the Twin Cities Cyclones.

With the ill-fated Zoetermeer Panthers, Marc wore the ‘A’ on his jersey and was clipping along at nearly a point per game pace. He continued to produce points with Eaters Geleen (sometimes called the Smoke Eaters) and the team finished sixth in the regular season. Geleen is currently battling it out in the Eredivisie semi-finals.

Teammate on Eaters Geleen and Ontario Hockey League grad, Brad Smulders, was previously featured at OHL Alumni Central.

Check out Marc Lefebvre’s profile page at the Eaters Geleen Official Website.

At the start of March, we did a post on Ontario Hockey League alumni playing in the Australian Ice Hockey League (click here to view post). One of the players was Brad Smulders and we’d just like to add an update on this former Sarnia Sting.

Brad is signed on for the 2010 season with the Gold Coast Blue Tongues of the AIHL. The season starts in about 4 weeks, in time for the Australian winter. Last season, Brad was the league’s scoring champion with a remarkable 3.5 points per game. Expectations are no less for the upcoming season.

Brad has just finished up the winter season in the Netherlands with Romijnders Devils Nijmegen. Not the leading scorer in this league. In fact, Brad was 5th in team scoring but still was slightly over a point a game in a higher calibre league with more than twice the number of games on the schedule.

The team was the best during the regular season and just recently won the playoff championships with a sweep over Destil Trapper Tilburg.

As mentioned in the previous post, Brad only played 17 games over his OHL career. This still makes him a product of the league and a true measure of how far reaching the OHL is in the hockey world.

To view Brad Smulders profile page on the Devils official website, click here.

To check out the Gold Coast Blue Tongues roster page, click here.