Confident Spitfires view more youth as big asset

There are shades of this season’s Windsor Spitfires squad that make it easy to compare it to the team assembled by general manager Warren Rychel in 2007-08. No, that’s not the team’s first Memorial Cup season.

It’s the season just prior to that first title where a strong, young base was injected with even more young players and made a 51-point jump in the standings.

“It does,” Rychel said of the comparison. “It’s got a little bit of that feeling with the young guys. Our ’01 and ’02 (born) guys are going to play a lot.”

In 2006-07, the Spitfires didn’t hesitate to put a big chunk of Rychel’s first draft class into the lineup, let it take its lumps and learn, and then followed that with another heavy dose of youth. Windsor put rookies Mathew MacDougall, Daniel D’Amico, Nathan Staios, Louka Henault and Lev Starikov into the lineup last season and then added rookie first-round picks Cody Morgan and Grayson Ladd to the lineup through trades.

Now the club will add more youth this season in Jean-Luc Foudy and Will Cuylle, who were both first-round picks, along with second-round pick Kyle McDonald, 2017 pick Jordan Frasca, who saw limited action with the team last year, and goalie Kari Piiroinen, who was the team’s first-round pick in this year’s Canadian Hockey League Import Draft. That group will make its OHL regular-season debut on Thursday when the Spitfires open the season against the Guelph Storm at the WFCU Centre at 7:05 p.m. “As a coach, you’re always a bit anxious,” head coach Trevor Letowski said. “You never know what it’s going to look like when the regular season starts, but I can’t wait.

“I think, if you want to be a great team, you have to develop your players and you have to make every single player that played last year better. If you can continue to do that consistently, you’re going to have a good chance to win all the time.”

There is something building with this team and even the players recognize it.

“I think we’re a pretty young group, but I think we have a really bright future ahead of us,” said Cuylle, who was the third overall pick in this year’s OHL Draft. “There’s a lot of learning still to be done, but I think the future’s really bright and the fans can expect a lot this year.” Goaltending should continue to be a strength for the club with Mikey DiPietro, who was the OHL’s goalie of the year last season, set to return for a final term along with Piiroinen, who will get the start on Thursday with DiPietro still at camp with the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks.

Ladd, Staios, Henault, Starikov and Thomas Stevenson each played their first OHL season a year ago. Hayden Johnston, third-year man Connor Corcoran and overager Sean Allen round out the unit. While it was challenging at times for the young defencemen a year a go, that trial by fire should aid the unit this year.

“After the trade deadline, I was sad to see those guys go, but my role really expanded after that, which gave me a lot of confidence,” Staios said. “It was tough being a first-year guy because it’s all new, but it was really good.

“I think it would have been more of an adjustment coming into my second year. I think it would have been tougher if I didn’t have the experience. I have so much confidence and I think, in the future, it’s scary how good we can be.” The Spitfires will look for growth on offence but expect contributions from all four lines. “There’s a lot of interchangeable parts,” Letowski said. “You can look at the lineup and make an argument for almost every forward that, if he’s in the right situation, he can score 20 goals. That’s not reality that they can all score 20, but that’s kind of the makeup of our team.” Cole Purboo went from 11 goals as a rookie to 21 last season. Curtis Douglas, who was an NHL pick by Dallas, finished with a combined 22 goals between Windsor and Barrie. Mathew MacDougall was on track for 20 goals before veterans were traded away and finished with 17. Captain Luke Boka (15 goals), Igor Larionov, who missed 36 games (six goals), Luke Kutkevicius (13 goals in 40 games), Morgan, Daniel D’Amico (12 goals), Tyler Angle (10 goals) and Chris Playfair will each be counted on to improve their offensive total from a year ago. “You see our team and the first thing that pops into your mind is how fast we are,” Boka said. “We added some very new skilled, young players and they’re going to be really good for us, too. I think we can make some noise.” A young Windsor squad overachieved to finish sixth overall in the conference a year ago and while still young, Boka expects even more this season and thinks it would be a mistake for anyone to underestimate this squad.

“If they do, that’s a mistake,” Boka said. “We’ll show them for sure. Give us a couple games and teams won’t underestimate us.”