The chance to defend himself
Unwanted by the Erie Otters, Josh Wainman answers the call from the Hamilton Bulldogs
The wait was the worst part.
For the past couple of weeks, Josh Wainman had been hanging out at home in Peterborough, wondering if his Ontario Hockey League career was behind him or if someone, anyone, would give him another chance.
Then, around noon on Friday, the phone rang.
It was the Bulldogs, his new rights holders, and they wanted to know if he could get to Hamilton in time to play that night. Seven hours later, he was in the lineup for a visit from the Oshawa Generals.
“This is awesome,” said the veteran defenceman. “Very thankful.” For the opportunity, that is, as well as the chance to prove “a lot of people” wrong.
At the top of the list are the Erie Otters. That’s who Wainman, 19, was playing for — 131 games over parts of the past three seasons — before he was bumped from the roster just before the start of the regular season.
“They kind of talked to me, said
they wanted to go younger on the back end and were looking to trade me,” he said. Then they sent him home until a deal was done.
But he also has something to prove to the rest of the OHL. To all of those teams in the market for a blueliner that didn’t give him a shot.
“I think I want to show the league, like, why didn’t they take me earlier?” he said. “Stuff like that.”
It’s clear that for Wainman, a six-foot, 170-pound former OHL champion who had five goals, 21 assists and a plus-minus rating of minus-31 in his stint with the Otters, a move to Hamilton is a good thing. But what about for the Bulldogs?
In the short term, the move makes sense. Acquiring the mobile left-shooter — especially for the low price of a 10th-round draft pick in 2019 — gives the team a seventh defenceman, which it badly needed. In fact, without him, it’s possible the Bulldogs would have been down to three blueliners against the Petes on Saturday (D.J. King was
scratched with a hand injury, Kade Landry left late in the second period and didn’t return after blocking a shot with his leg and Frank Jenkins was temporarily sidelined after absorbing a hard check with his shoulder) — a game they held on to win 3-2.
In the long term, meanwhile, it will help relieve pressure from rookies like Jenkins and Michael Renwick, who — because of a high rate of player turnover — have been thrust into unusually large roles.
“We need older guys to be able to manage those minutes,” said head coach Dave Matsos. Especially over the course of a long season in which it’s not unusual for the team to play three games in three days.
“It really is hard on the young guys when we ask them to work out, they’re in a new billet home, they’re doing all these things that we’re asking them to do to be junior players. Picking up a guy with experience is definitely going to help us.”
Nic Mattinen agreed.
“It’s pretty exciting getting an extra body on the back end,” said the overage defenceman. “Just some more depth to take a little bit of the load off our 16-yearolds, because that’s a lot to ask of them. It’s good for them to be able to learn from older guys and to kind of watch us do what we do and then for them to take over next year.”
Wainman, who chipped in two assists over the weekend, is comfortable in a leadership role. It’s something he filled last season on a rebuilding team in Erie.
“I’m going to try to translate that here. Just lead by example and hopefully the younger guys kind of follow along,” he said.
Mostly, though, he’s excited to be back on the ice, to be getting his chance, and that the wait — even though it wasn’t all that long — is over.
The Bulldogs started the weekend with a 7-1 loss to the Generals on Friday and wrapped it up with a 5-2 win over the host Windsor Spitfires on Sunday.
Rookie netminder Zachary Roy had 42 saves in the latter game, which was his first OHL start.
Notes: Three members of the national women’s hockey team — Hamilton’s Sarah Nurse, Burlington’s Renata Fast and Scarborough’s Natalie Spooner — dropped the puck on Saturday as part of World Girls Hockey Day . ... Logan Morrison notched his first OHL goal against the Generals, Avery Hayes scored his against the Petes and Liam Van Loon posted his against the Spitfires.