Generals admission? McDavid a big ticket, even in Oshawa

Layoffs don’t stop demand to see out-of-town star

In Oshawa, Ont., where General Motors last week announced it was going to cut another 1,000 jobs from its shrinking local operation, tickets to a junior hockey playoff series are becoming a lucrative sideline endeavour: Teenage hockey at professional prices.

The Oshawa Generals sold out the first two games of their best-of-seven Ontario Hockey League championship series with the Erie Otters within an hour on Monday. And by late afternoon on Wednesday, two days before the puck dropped on Game 1, a resale website was listing a single standingroom ticket at US$120.42 — more than three times the face value.

“Well, I think it’s fairly obvious,” Generals head coach D.J. Smith said. “You have the best player in junior hockey, in the world, coming into your market.”

Connor McDavid has been playing up to his billing this spring. The 18-year-old forward is poised to break an OHL playoff scoring record set four years before he was born. And that would likely be his final act in Ontario before ascending to the NHL this summer.

He will almost certainly be the first player taken at the draft in June. Wayne Gretzky told the Edmonton Journal that McDavid would be “the best player to come into the league in the last 30 years,” while retired goaltender Curtis Joseph told Sportsnet: “He’s never needed a coach … Just open the door.”

McDavid has 42 points in 15 playoff games with the Otters. That pace — 2.8 points per game — is better than some of the brightest NHL stars did at the same age. Taylor Hall won two straight Memorial Cup titles with the Windsor Spitfires, but he did not average more than 1.84 points a game in the OHL playoffs.

Patrick Kane, now a star with the Chicago Blackhawks, averaged 1.93 points a game for the London Knights in 2007.

“It ’s outlandish, really,” Smith said in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.

The record for most points in an OHL playoff season is 51, a total reached twice, but not for more than a decade. Jason Dawe set the record in 1993 with the Peterborough Petes, and Justin Papineau matched it six years later with the Belleville Bulls.

If McDavid stays on course, he would break the record by Game 4 against Oshawa.

“He’s going into this draft and into his career hyped as potentially one of the best,” Dawe said. “I hope he breaks the record.” So how do you stop history? “I don’ t think there’s a specific plan, and if there was, I wouldn’t tell you,” Smith said.

“I don’t think nervous is the word,” Generals captain Josh Brown said. “But obviously, I’ve got to go back to the drawing board here and think about how I’m going to try and shut him down.”

On Monday, fans lined up outside the arena for the chance to see if it could be done. It was only four days after General Motors announced that, as of November, it would no longer produce the Chevrolet Camaro in Oshawa. That work is moving to Michigan.

And still, the few tickets that remained on the ticket resale website StubHub were not exactly selling at a discount on Wednesday. A pair of tickets to Game 7 — if necessary — was listed for sale at US$479.10.

Part of that has to do with possibility. Oshawa has won more OHL titles than any other franchise, but none in almost two decades. The Generals are also the only show in town, with the Toronto Maple Leafs having imploded long ago.

A big part, though, is the lure of seeing the opposing star himself. In Edmonton, where the Oilers hold the magical first pick in the draft, the name Connor McJesus has already appeared in at least one newspaper.

The noise has been loud all season, but not as much in Erie, Pa., where the international border has acted as a bit of a muffler.

“It’s something that has never been a problem for me. I’ve been getting more and more used to dealing with that kind of stuff,” McDavid said. “It’s really easy just to be in Erie and be with the guys … and it’s really easy just to kind of block it out.”

McDavid has recorded at least a point in all 15 playoff games this spring. In Erie’s semifinal series with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, he had 19 points, including five in the final game, a 7-3 win in Game 6.

“You’ve certainly got to take your hat off,” said Smith, the coach responsible for coming up with a plan. “I don’t think, at this point, anyone thinks anyone can stop him.”