Fewer Ontario players making it to the NHL
There seems to be a consensus among player evaluators that the Ontario Hockey League is gradually losing its prominence in producing NHL prospects.
Statistically, the OHL continues to supply more draft selections to the NHL than any other hockey league. For the last number of years, the OHL has produced an average of 20 per cent of the players selected.
The total number has not changed appreciably but the number of top players coming from the OHL is trending downwards.
Eliminating the Europeans and Americans playing on OHL teams, there seem to be fewer Ontario-born elite players in the OHL.
Comparing all the first-round selections of Ontario-born in the last 10 years with those of the 1990s, it has not changed much. In both decades there is an average of six Ontario-born players selected in the first round of the NHL draft.
The growing disparity is in the top 10 selections each year. At the 2018 NHL draft only two Ontarioin born players were selected in the top 10. Barrett Hayton, born in Peterborough, went fifth to Arizona and Evan Bouchard, born in Oakville, was selected by Edmonton, at 10th. In 2017, Owen Tippett, also from Peterborough, selected 10th was the only one. In 2016, there were three picked from Ontario teams, all Europeans and in 2015 of the four OHL players selected, including Connor McDavid, three were Ontario-born.
The prognosticators looking to the 2019 draft vary in their selections but few if any have any Ontario-born players in their top 10 potential selections. The top Ontario player on many lists is London-born Ryan Suzuki with Barrie. He falls in the mid-teens of the lists.
As for the source of top potential players, the United States has essentially caught up to Canada in their development of elite players. The spreading popularity of the game to all parts of the U.S. has attracted more top athletes selecting hockey as their game of choice. That has resulted in more Americans being drafted but still not near the total of Canadian born but more top-10 selections. With their vast numbers of elite American athletes and the growing number moving away from football and baseball and choosing hockey, there will definitely be more of the calibre of Auston Mathews, Patrick
Kane and projected number one 2019, Jack Hughes.
Also, many European countries have moved more resources to their minor hockey programs and the result is an increase of top players coming across the Atlantic Ocean to the NHL.
Many first make a stop with a Canadian junior team.
Has anything changed in Ontario hockey that has contributed to the decrease in elite players coming out of OHL teams?
According to scouts, Ontario hockey from elite minor to major junior is more controlled, less free-wheeling. The very stringent rules aimed at preventing hits to the head, in fact most types of hitting, in the opinion of those that assess hockey players for a living, has an effect.
Some feel Ontario seems to call such infraction closer than other leagues. If that is in fact the case, the league may be tempering the development of top level players. They believe it has decreased the number of those prototypical elite Ontario hockey players with top skills, outstanding hockey IQ who play with an edge.
Also not lost in this discussion is the way some top Ontario junior prospects are being manipulated by aggressive agents and pushy parents in shunning some Ontario teams in favour of others.
The jury is out on whether the entitlement and baggage these players bring to the team they finally end up with reflects negatively on their development through the way their teammates and coaches react with them.