Thomas was, indeed, the ticket
There could well be a day a year or two from now when a young man playing centre for the London Knights starts tearing up the league and Hamilton Bulldogs fans begin shaking their heads and wondering how their team ever gave the kid away.
Hockey people say Connor McMichael could be that good.
But if that day comes, those folks need to remember the past couple of months. This week in particular. Because without trading him, the Bulldogs don’t get Robert Thomas. And without Robert Thomas, they don’t win the Ontario Hockey League championship or go to the Memorial Cup.
This is what’s called a perfect trade. It didn’t always look like it was going to turn out this magnificently, though.
The day he walked into the Bulldogs’ dressing room after being acquired in an earlyJanuary trade, the 18-year-old almost needed his new teammates to wear Hello My Name Is stickers on their chests or maybe pieces of tape on the front of their helmets with their name like they do in kids’ hockey. Playing in the Western Conference, Thomas had only faced the Bulldogs a couple times and really hadn’t paid much attention to them. He knew Matt Strome, Mackenzie Entwistle and Nicolas Mattinen and that’s it. The rest were complete strangers.
“We didn’t keep up too much with the Eastern Conference at all,” he says.
On the eve of playing for a berth in the Memorial Cup final, its best player — one of the mostdominant players in the tournament so far — admits it took a while to fully hit his stride in black and gold.
It was in the golden wake of the world junior championship that the going-for-it Bulldogs decided to make their biggest splash by offering the Knights a future star centre in McMichael along with five high draft picks for Thomas. It was a huge offer.
Yet, it took a couple days to be completed as both teams waited for the centrepiece to give the thumbs up.
Some read into that delay that he was reluctant to leave the Knights. He did, after all, have a pretty good thing going in London. He was captain of the OHL’s marquee franchise and had already won a Memorial Cup. In his two-and-a-half years there he’d developed tight friendships with his teammates and a close relationship with his billets.
While he insists there was never any reluctance to join the Bulldogs — he says he had a few days off to be with his family and he was simply trying to take a mental break rather than contemplating not accepting the move — he acknowledges it was a tough decision to leave.
“It’s definitely not easy,” he says.
It’s not just the new billets, the new surroundings, the new teammates, the new coaches, the new system, the new city, the new schedule, the new rivalries and the new everything else. Arriving in town as a conquering Team Canada hero and the saviour who’s going to push the team over the top is a hefty load to bear for an 18-year-old.
Head coach John Gruden, general manager Steve Staios and even team owner Michael Andlauer did their best to walk back the expectations but he’s not stupid. He saw what they’d sacrificed for him.
“Obviously there is a lot of pressure when they give up a bunch of stuff (for you),” he says.
Worse, his first game for Hamilton was in London against the Knights. He got two assists that
night but it was different. He’d been piling up points before the trade but those numbers soon dipped a bit. Part of that was the result of the roster. Hamilton was deep. It meant lots of talented guys needed to get playing time. In green and yellow, he was on the ice every second shift. Suddenly, he wasn’t getting as much ice time.
“Not nearly as much,” he laughs.
The St. Louis Blues’ firstround draft pick says the adjustment period really took until the final few games of the regular season. But by the beginning of March, he was finally feeling comfortable. And once the playoffs got rolling, so was he. His 35 points are tops on the team. Only six times in 24 playoff games has he been held off the scoresheet. Despite playing with a carousel of linemates he continues to produce. For that reason, these
are almost certainly his last games in Hamilton. Just about everyone describes him as NHLready. Once the Memorial Cup is over it would be a huge surprise to see him back in junior hockey. That was the sentiment even before it started.
That’s his goal. After Sunday, anyway. For now it’s winning a second national championship. Hamilton’s first in 42 years.
“My goal was to be in this exact spot we’re in right now,” he says. “If we didn’t get here, it would’ve been a disappointment.”
Nobody’s disappointed now. Not him. Not the team. Certainly not the fans.
No matter what happens with McMichael down the road.