OHL Alumni Central

Brent Kelly is back in the Swiss National League B for the 2010-11 season but has switched teams from Olten to Langenthal. Langenthal is hoping the Ontario Hockey League alumnus will continue to be a dominant scorer in the league.

Kelly played four seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 1998-99 to 2001-02. Brent’s first three seasons were played with the Guelph Storm and his final season was with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. In that final season with the Greyhounds, Kelly led the team in scoring with 70 points on 38 goals and 32 assists over 67 regular season games.

Brent played for eight teams over six seasons in the North American minors. He started his pro career in 2002-03 with the Saint John Flames of the American Hockey League and finished up in North America in 2007-08 with the Lake Erie Monsters of the American Hockey League. In between he played for four other AHL teams, an ECHL team (Johnstown Chiefs) and a Central Hockey League team (Arizona Sundogs).

Kelly was an all-star during his one season in the CHL. He led the Sundogs in scoring with 95 points from 42 goals and 53 assists in just 55 games. He added another 22 points in 14 playoff games.

In 2008-09, Brent moved to Europe and played for Herning of Denmarks AL-Bank Ligaen. Kelly was a hit in Denmark. He was an all-star and led the league in goals (30) and points (77).

He moved his scoring act to Switzerland for the 2009-10 season. Brent’s 41 goals and 51 assists for 92 points in just 47 games was good enough for second in league scoring. The team finished second in the National League B, just one point out of first place.

To check out Brent Kelly’s profile on the Langenthal official website, click here then click Brent’s name from the roster list.

Changes are abound for Sundays at OHL Alumni Central. Out is Sensational Sunday Search For Sites and in is OHL Alumni Classics. SSSFS was a good idea but didn’t focus on what this site is all about, OHL Alumni. Classics will once a week bring you great articles on graduates of the Ontario Hockey League that have retired from active hockey and whose stories are great but not readily known.

Kevin Conway

Kevin Conway played four seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 1980-81 to 1983-84. His first season consisted of only nine games with the Oshawa Generals. His second and third were played with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds and his final season started with two games with the Sault before finishing the season with the Kingston Canadians.

After two seasons in the Ontario Hockey League, Conway had played just 45 regular season games while scoring seven goals and adding nine assists for 16 points. In his third and fourth season, Kevin’s offense exploded with seasons of 122 and 130 points.

In 1982-83, his 122 points placed him ninth in Ontario Hockey League scoring. The Greyhounds lost out to the Oshawa Generals in Robertson Cup finals. As a side note, that season was the first for the Guelph Platers and was also the first for the North Bay Centennials after moving from Niagara Falls where they were known as the Flyers.

In 1983-84, Conway was traded to the Kingston Canadians after just two games with the Greyhounds, despite contributing three goals in those two games. Despite the Canadians finishing last in the Leyden Division, Kevin’s 130 total points was good enough for sixth in the league. His 20 penalty minutes helped him win the William Hanley Trophy as the Ontario Hockey League’s Most Sportsmanlike Player.

Despite the numbers, Conway went undrafted by an NHL club. Kevin played one season in the old IHL, split between the Toledo Goaldiggers and the Salt Lake Golden Eagles, before moving to Great Britain and finding his calling as a hockey legend.

Conway put up rediculous numbers playing in the BNL. In his first season, he popped in 129 goals and added 98 assists for 227 points in just 35 games! These numbers would be topped in 1987-88 when he scored 151 goals in addition to 112 assists for a combined total of 263 points. This feat was done in just 31 games, 2 with the Durham Wasps and 29 with the Telford Tigers. He still found time to spend 108 minutes in the penalty box.

In all, Conway reached the 100 goal plateau four times in the BNL and the 100 point mark nine times. He played at various levels of British ice hockey until the end of the 2007-08 season.

Kevin represented Great Britain at the World Championships five different times. His 66 points as a member of the national team is second on the all-time list. His contribution to hockey in Great Britain had him elected to the British Ice Hockey Hall of Fame in 2005.

Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds alumnus Ralph Intranuovo will be entering his 18th season in professional hockey and his 12th season in Europe. Intranuovo will return to HC Asiago of Italy’s Lega Italiana Hockey Ghiaccio (LIHG) for his second season with the club.

Ralph Intranuovo played three seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 1990-91 to 1992-93, all with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. In 1991-92, Ralph finished eighth in OHL scoring with 113 points on 50 goals and 63 assists in 65 games. The Greyhounds finished atop the Emms Division and beat out the North Bay Centennials for the Robertson Cup as Ontario Hockey League champions. Despite being undefeated in the round robin of the Memorial Cup, the Greyhounds fell to the Kamloops Blazers in the Memorial Cup final.

In his final season, he contributed 31 goals and 47 assists for 78 points in just 54 games. The Greyhounds once again took the Emms Division crown but fell in the Robertson Cup final to the Peterborough Petes. However, the Greyhounds participated in the Memorial Cup as the host team and won the Cup by beating out the Petes in the final. Intranuovo was named the Stafford Smythe Memorial Trophy winner as tournament MVP and was also named as the All-Star centre.

As if that final season wasn’t magic enough for Ralph, he was also a member of the 1993 gold medal winning Team Canada squad at the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships.

All that success during his Ontario Hockey League career got him drafted in the fourth round of the 1992 NHL draft by the Edmonton Oilers, 96th overall. Intranuovo appeared in 19 games for the Oilers over three seasons and spent most of his time in the American Hockey League with Edmonton’s affiliate, the Cape Breton Oilers.

Ralph was an AHL all-star in 1994-95 and 1995-96. In 1994-95, he was fourth in league scoring with 46 goals and 47 assists for 93 points in 70 games with a dismal Cape Breton team. In 1994-95, despite appearing in just one game with the NHL Oilers, Intranuovo was an integral part of the Team Canada team at the IIHF World Hockey Championships. Canada took home a bronze medal and Ralph helped out with 5 goals and an assist in 8 games.

Ralph appeared in three more NHL games as a Toronto Maple Leaf during the 1996-97 season but his NHL career never quite took flight. He spent two seasons with the Manitoba Moose in the old IHL before heading to Europe to start the 1999-00 season. He has since split most of his time between teams in Germany’s DEL and Austria’s EBEL until moving over to Italy this past season.

Intranuovo should be a great mentor to the number of Ontario Hockey League grads on HC Asiago for 2010-11. The team is a heavy favourite to do well this season and will certainly be interesting to watch.

Ralph Intranuovo’s profile can be found from the HC Asiago official website roster page.

Ralph will be teammates with fellow Ontario Hockey League grad, Andrew Perugini.

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

Rob Dmytruk played three seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 2000-01 to 2002-03. Each season he played in the OHL, he found himself on a different team’s roster.

Dmytruk’s Ontario Hockey League career began with the Belleville Bulls. His second season consisted of only 19 games with the Sudbury Wolves. In his final season, he went west and played for the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. In total, Rob played in 89 regular season games in the OHL as well as six total playoff games.

After his Ontario Hockey League career, Dmytruk went the Canadian university route and played five seasons at Wilfred Laurier University. In his fourth season, 2006-07, he developed into an offensive defenseman scoring 11 goals and adding 21 assists for 32 points in 28 games. In his final two seasons with Laurier, Rob was a first team all-star.

2008-09 was Rob Dmytruk’s only season of professional hockey in North America and he bounced around between three different clubs in two leagues. He began the season with the Phoenix Roadrunners of the ECHL and moved on to the Rapid City Rush and Tulsa Oilers of the Central Hockey League.

This past season, Dmytruk moved to the European hockey scene and played with Eindhoven Kemphanen in the Netherlands. He continued his offensive ways with 14 goals and 20 assists for 34 points in 42 games.

This upcoming season, Rob has shifted to France’s Ligue Magnus and the Ducs Dijon. We’ve noted before that not many Ontario Hockey League alumni play in the Ligue Magnus. Hopefully Rob will find great success with Dijon.

Rob Dmytruk’s profile has yet to appear on the Ducs Dijon official website but you can follow this link to the story on the the website announcing the arrival of Rob.