OHL Alumni Central

Is Great Britain’s Elite Ice Hockey League just using Ontario Hockey League grads for their fists? The EIHL typically has more than a few OHL alumni among the top ten scorers in the league. This year, there are just two in the top 20 with approximately 10 games to go in the regular season. These two, Mike Ramsay and Corey Neilson, fall in the 16th and 20th position. Ramsay, a player who was used sparingly by the Peterborough Petes over two partial seasons and Neilson, a 35 year old defenseman who last played for the Barrie Colts in 1997.

Yet, when it comes to time spent in the box, seven the OHL can lay claim to seven of the top 20, including three of the top five. Derek Campbell is the highest, sitting in second place with 209 PIM in just 44 games, a 4.75 PIM/GM pace. However, he doesn’t hold a candle to league leader Chris Frank of the Cardif Devils who has 286 PIM in 42 games – a 6.81 PIM per game pace!

It’s not that the British Isles are developing better talent. Just three of the top 20 point getters are from Great Britain and one includes Corey Neilson. Neilson is Canadian born but has since gotten his UK citizenship. For the most part, it’s just the way it goes in European hockey. It’s a transient hockey world and by next year at this time, OHL boys could be clogging the scoring race.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the players involved:

Top Scorers:

Mike Ramsay is tied for 16th wit 47 points in just 33 games, not bad for a guy who totaled just 5 goals with the Petes. Ramsay played with Peterborough for parts of the 2001-02 and 2002-03 season. He moved on to the QMJHL where he achieved greater success. This is Mike’s first year with the Sheffield Steelers of the EIHL.

Corey Neilson is in his sixth year with the Nottingham Panthers and truly leads by example. Neilson has also been the coach of the team for the past four years. The defenseman has 45 points in 45 games to rank him at the edge of the top 20. Ironically, his 81 PIM actually tied him for the 20th in that race, as well. Corey played in the Ontario Hockey League from 1993-94 to 1996-97 with the North Bay Centennials, Detroit Whalers and Barrie Colts.

Top Bad Boys:

Derek Campbell sits in second with 209 PIM in 44 games as a member of the Hull Stingrays. This his sixth year in the EIHL and first with Hull. Campbell played four years in the OHL from 1997-98 to 2000-01 with the Belleville Bulls, Owen Sound Platers and Kingston Frontenacs.

No surprise to Kitchener Rangers fans, Adam Keefe holds down the number 4 spot with 164 PIM in 41 games with the Belfast Giants. Keefe is in his first year in the EIHL and already has a ‘A’ on his jersey. Adam played in the Ontario Hockey League from 2000-01 to 2004-05 with the Sudbury Wolves and Kitchener.

A position behind Keefe is Colt King with 135 PIM in 41 games with the Sheffield Steelers. This is Colt’s first season in the EIHL. He played in the OHL from 1999-00 to 2003-04 with what seems like half the league. King wore the OHL jersey’s of the Guelph Storm, North Bay Centennials, Saginaw Spirit, Oshawa Generals, Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds and Sarnia Sting.

Frantisek Bakrlik is tied for 12th with 90 PIM in 48 games. It’ll be interesting to see how many regular season games Bakrlik ends up playing. The Fife Flyers are his third team this season in the EIHL and it looks like he’s picked up a few extra games due to scheduling differences at the time of each of his trades. Frantisek played in the OHL in 2000-01 and 2001-02 with the Barrie Colts and Sarnia Sting. This is his first year in the EIHL.

Darryl Lloyd is in 15th with 88 PIM in 37 games with the Belfast Giants. Lloyd is in his first season in the EIHL and is currently injured. Darryl played three seasons with the Windsor Spitfires from 2001-02 to 2003-04.

Drew Bannister falls in 17th spot with 84 PIM in 40 games with the Braehead Clan. Bannister will turn 38 in a few months and began his OHL career way back in 1990. He played four seasons with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds from 1990-91 to 1993-94. A second round pick of the Tampa Bay Lightning in 1992, Bannister has 176 NHL games under his belt, including playoffs. This is his second year in the EIHL and first with the Clan.

Just a minute behind Bannister is Sylvain Cloutier of the Hull Stingrays. Cloutier has 83 minutes in 41 games. This is Cloutier’s fifth EIHL season and third with the Stingrays. Like Corey Neilson with Nottingham, Sylvain is also the coach of the team and is in the third year of that position. Cloutier played three years in the OHL with the Guelph Storm from 1991-92 to 1993-94. A veteran of seven NHL games, all with the Chicago Blackhawks in 1998-99.

The Lahden Pelicans of Finland’s SM-Liiga are treading in rare territory. Three quarters of the way through the 2011-12 season, Pelicans find themselves in second place in the fourteen team Finnish elite league. The team has never never won a championship and has really never enjoyed any great playoff success. 2011-12 might just be the year of the Pelicans.

Pelicans are led by an Ontario Hockey League grad and the team has recently picked up two more OHL alumni for the playoff run. Justin Hodgman is tied for tenth in league scoring. Czech natives Jan Platil and Radek Smolenak are recent pickups from other SM-Liiga teams.

Justin Hodgman played four years in the Ontario Hockey League with the Erie Otters from 2005-06 to 2008-09. Undrafted, Hodgman spent the past two years bouncing around between the IHL, ECHL and AHL. In 2010-11, Justin played mostly with the Toronto Marlies of the AHL with a few games down in the ECHL with the Reading Royals. This is his first season in Finland.

Jan Platil played for the Barrie Colts for three seasons from 2000-01 to 2002-03. A seventh round pick of the Ottawa Senators at the 2001 NHL Entry Draft, Platil spent three years in Ottawa’s farm system with the AHL’s Binghamton Senators before heading to Europe for the 2006-07 season. Jan has since played in Russia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany and Austria. He began the season with Orli Znojmo in Austria’s EBEL before moving to Tappara in the SM-Liiga.

Radek Smolenak played two seasons with the Kingston Frontenacs, 2004-05 and 2005-06. Drafted by the Tampa Bay Lightning after his first year in the OHL, Radek excelled in his second season with Kingston, scoring 42 and assisting on another 42 for 84 points in 65 games. Smolenak did get into seven NHL games after turning pro, six with Tampa Bay in 2008-09 and one with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2009-10.

Smolenak has been in Europe for the past two seasons. in 2010-11, he played for his hometown HC Sparta Prague. He began the current season in Finland with Assat.

As this article goes live, I am already in my sixth day in Cuba at a small resort near Cienfuegos. Not a vacation, of course, but another hockey scouting mission. The Cuban ice hockey scene is flourishing and it won’t be long before they’re challenging Canada at the Olympics (ok – it’s hard enough to get ice in your drink on this island, let alone install an ice rink…).

Anyhow… This is one of those ‘best of’ or ‘check out these articles’ type article. They are all from my mind and fingers. They are all mediocre to good but somewhat factually accurate.

Four London Knights That Have Won the Red Tilson Trophy

The Red Tilson Trophy has been awarded to the most outstanding player in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL, OMJHL, OHA) since 1944-45. The London Knights entered the OHA as the London Nationals for the 1965-66 season, renamed the Knights for 1968-69. In that time, four London Knights players have been named the recipient of the Red Tilson Trophy.

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8 Memorial Cup Finals Decided in Overtime Since 1972

Previous to 1972, the Memorial Cup was decided with a multi-game series between two teams. Since 1972, the ultimate prize in Canadian major junior hockey has been competed for in a three or four team tournament with a one-game final to decide the champion. In the 40 years with this format, the Memorial Cup final game has been decided in overtime on seven occasions.

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3,649 NHL Games Represented in the 1974-75 OMJHL’s Top 5 Scorers

The top five OHL (then the OMJHL) players in the 1974-75 race for the Eddie Powers Trophy all moved on to careers in the National Hockey League. The Eddie Powers Trophy is handed out each season to the Ontario Hockey League player with the most points during the regular season. The top five players in 1974-75 represent 3,649 regular season NHL games. One player appeared in over 1,000 NHL games but only one was a first round NHL draft pick.

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3 Niagara Falls Flyers to Win The OHL’s Eddie Powers Trophy

Version ‘A’ of the Niagara Falls Flyers existed in the Ontario Hockey Association between 1960-61 and 1971-72. Previous to 1960, the franchise was still known as the Flyers but located in Barrie. The team was relocated for the 1972-73 season and still exists as the Sudbury Wolves. These Flyers are not to be confused with the team (version ‘B’) that was relocated from St. Catherines for the 1976-77 season and is now the current Saginaw Spirit.

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Hockey Trivia 44 – Canadian Hockey League Goal Scoring Records

The 1970’s and 1980’s brought some incredible offensive numbers to the Canadian Hockey League. The three major junior hockey leagues acrossCanadathat make up the CHL all had their individual regular season goal scoring records set in the 1980’s.

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Michal Dvorak played in the Ontario Hockey League for the Kitchener Rangers for three seasons from 1996-97 to 1998-99. The Czech born player arrived part way through his rookie season after starting the year in the Czech Extraliga. That year, the Rangers won the Central Division title and fell to the eventual Robertson Cup champions, the Oshawa Generals, in the semi-finals.

Dvorak went undrafted and returned to Europe for the 1999-00 season. After one year in Germany’s DEL with Moskitos Essen, Michal returned to his homeland. Since 2000-01, he has played in the Czech Extraliga, mostly with HC Plzen. Dvorak had a three year stint with HC Karlovy Vary from 2004-05 to 2006-07 but has been with Plzen since. In a league with a 52 game regular season schedule, topping the 650 game mark and still ticking is quite an accomplishment.

With Plzen, Michal has reached the league semi-finals twice, in 2003-04 and 2008-09. The team is poised to go far in 2011-12. Currently, at nearly the 3/4 mark of the season, Plzen is neck and neck with HC Sparta Praha for the overall lead in the 14 team Extraliga. Both are head and shoulders over the next competitor.

Dvorak is currently the only Ontario Hockey League grad on the Plzen roster. However, North American hockey fans would be interested to know that not only is Martin Straka the team’s star player, he is also 70% owner and general manager! Straka was the nineteenth overall pick at the 1992 NHL Entry Draft by the Pittsburgh Penguins. Between 1992-93 and 2007-08, Straka played for the Penguins, Ottawa Senators, New York Islanders, Florida Panthers, Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers. He played in 954 regular season NHL games and contributed 717 points. He topped out offensively in 2000-01, finished tied for fourth in the race for the Art Ross Trophy with 95 points.

Another familiar name on HC Plzen is Frantisek Kaberle, brother of current Montreal Canadiens defenseman, Tomas Kaberle. Frantisek played 523 NHL regular season games between 1999-00 and 2008-09 with the Los Angeles Kings, Atlanta Thrashers and Carolina Hurricanes.

About as far from Brampton and Ottawa as you can get in the world of hockey is Temirtau, Kazakhstan. Just a “Detroit to Montreal’s” distance from Mongolia and China, this city of 180,000 didn’t even exist before 1905. The team plays out of the ten team Kazak league and features two Ontario Hockey League grads on the roster.

Levente Szuper started his 2011-12 season in the Central Hockey League with the Arizona Sundogs. This ‘hockey vagabond’ is no stranger to the wide world of ice hockey. Since playing two seasons in net for the Ottawa 67′s in 1998-99 and 1999-00, Szuper has played in Canada, the United States, Hungary, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Austria. He has played on the world stage with his native Hungary on a yearly basis.

Levente was a fourth round pick of the Calgary Flames at the 2000 NHL Entry Draft, 116th overall. He spent three seasons with Calgary’s AHL affiliate, the Saint John Flames, and one season split between the AHL’s Worcester IceCats and the ECHL’s Peoria Rivermen before starting his world tour. He has been a member of championship teams in the Ontario Hockey League, Germany’s DEL and the AHL. With Hungary, he has won a handful of medals and individual accolades at the World Championships (D1). He played a role with the 1998-99 Ottawa team that was crowned Memorial Cup champions.

Get your Levente Szuper hockey cards on eBay, right now!

Kurt MacSweyn has been on a similar world journey since leaving the Ontario Hockey League after the 2001-02 season. Kurt was an original Brampton Battalion, playing in the franchise’s first year, 1998-99. He spent four years with the club before heading off to University  at St. Mary’s. After three years getting educated, MacSweyn spent the 2005-06 season in the ECHL with the Idaho Steelheads before heading to Europe, and beyond. Kurt has played in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Australia. 2011-12 is his first season with Temirtau.

Arystan Temirtau currently sits in fourth place in the ten team league, 38 games into their 54 game regular season schedule. In 2010-11, the team finished fifth and exited the post season after the quarter-finals. The Kazak league would best be described as a minor league to the KHL. The team plays out of the 2,700 seat Muz Aydin Sport Palace.