IceDogs draft war room goes virtual
First three rounds will be streamed live on league’s YouTube channel
Saturday’s Ontario Hockey League Priority Selection won’t be your dad’s OHL draft.
Not even your grandfather’s. Think back longer than that, to Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.
While few players chosen in the 15-round draft will get calls from teams on a land line in the age of the cellphone, almost everyone involved in this first virtual draft won’t receive updates by word of mouth from the person standing next to them.
COVID-19 restrictions limiting public gatherings to no more than five people means most of the discussions involving team officials and scouts between rounds will be conducted online, not in a so-called “war room” filled with laptops and reams of scouting reports.
Prospects and their families have been reminded by the league that the emergency order enacted March 28 in Ontario also restricts social gatherings to no more than five people.
“This year’s unique approach to a very special day will be conducted in the interest of ensuring the health and safety of prospects, their families as well OHL member team and league personnel,” the league said in a statement.
Seventeen of the OHL’s 20 teams are based in Ontario. Teams in Michigan and Pennsylvania will also be following public-health recommendations of local, state and federal governments.
As in past years, the one-day draft will get underway at 9 a.m.
Players, their families and fans can follow the first three rounds streaming on live on the OHL’s YouTube channel.
Unlike past years, the Niagara IceDogs won’t have to wait too long before making their first pick. General manager Joey Burke picks second, right after the North Bay Battalion.
The selection will be the highest ever for the franchise. Niagara’s previous high was in 2017 when Phil Tomasino was taken in the first round with the fifth overall pick.
Tomasino has more than lived up to that high billing in the three seasons since his selection. He scored 61 goals and collected 153 points in 164 games with the IceDogs and, since the January trade deadline, with the Oshawa Generals. Last June, Tomasino, a Mississauga native, was taken by the Nashville
Predators in the first round of the NHL draft with the 24th pick.
Burke, who also serves as the IceDogs’ governor, heads a draft team that features assistant GM Brandon Currie, scouting director Roger MacLeod and scouts Kenny Fleck for Ottawa region, Rob Hubbert for the Greater Ontario Hockey League, Matt Milne for South Central triple-A, goaltending, Tim MacLean for Greater Toronto Area, Vince Tarantino for Eastern triple-A and Brent Tomlinson for Northern Ontario.
Defenceman Isaac Enright, Niagara’s top selection in last year’s OHL draft, going in the first round, 17th overall, was among four picks who saw action with the team during the 2019-20 season. Also receiving playing time were defenceman Landon Cato, a third-round pick, 46th overall; goaltender Josh Rosenzweig, a sixth-rounder, 119th overall; and centre Anthony Agostinelli, selected in the eighth round, 159th overall.
Niagara’s first pick in the 2018 draft — defenceman Lleyton Moore, who went in the first round, 12th overall — was part of a tradedeadline deal that brought Oshawa Generals captain Jack Studnicka to St. Catharines.
Niagara’s two triple-A minormidget programs — the Southern Tier Admirals and the North Niagara Stars — have a combined 13 skaters on the final Prospect Pipeline rankings of the top 250 Canadian skaters available in Saturday’s draft.
Admirals forward Sam Alfano was listed 11th, heading a Southern Tier draft class that includes centre Andrew LeBlanc at 17th, right-winger Trent Swick at 46th, defenceman Joseph LeBlanc at 64th, defenceman Luke Gualtieri at 81st, leftwinger Dawson Lukey at 115th, centre Cam Lowe at 150th, defenceman Matthew Donnison at 161st, centre Wyatt Gibson at 184th and defenceman Connor ThomsonDick at 245th.
Centre Tai York, coming in at 81st, right-winger Ethan Whitcomb, at 147th, and defenceman Derek Smyth, at 160th, are the Niagara North Stars players in the rankings.
In addition to cancelling the final 56 games of the regular season, and the playoffs, the league also pulled the plug on the Ontario Cup.
While that denied prospects a chance to showcase their skills heading into the draft, Burke is confident the IceDogs have done their due diligence and are “extremely well-versed” on who is available. “I’m sure there will be some teams and scouts out there who wish they had done their homework a little bit earlier now that they don’t get that last chance to see everyone a couple of times,” he said.
Niagara, which picked 17th, 12th, fifth and 12th overall over the past four drafts, doesn’t have filling a particular need in mind heading into the draft. “At this point, it’s kind of the best player available because there are two or three guys who are probably head and shoulders above the rest,” Burke said. “A lot is going to depend on what North Bay does in front of us.”
Niagara and the Kingston Frontenacs finished the shortened, 61game regular season tied for the final playoff berth in the east with 42 points. Normally, that would require a play-in game, with the winner going on, but the Frontenacs won a tiebreaker based on regularseason wins, 19 to 18.