The Barrie Colts and their fans travelling south from North Bay on Tuesday night suffered one final indignity after the heartbreaking 3-1 loss in Game 7 to the Battalion in their Eastern Conference semifinal series.
After a season of so many twists and turns, the group had one more unexpected obstacle placed in front of them: The team’s bus was stopped dead due to off-hours construction just north of Orillia.
The Colts had played their collective heart out both Monday night at home to force Game 7, and again on Tuesday in a hostile northern environment. The Colts rode the splendid goaltending of Anson Thornton and were playing a perfect road game until allowing two power-play goals early in the third period that sealed their fate.
The cruel cycle of junior hockey now churns.
Brandt Clarke, one of the most talented players to ever wear the Colts crest, will be given every opportunity to become a regular on the Los Angeles Kings and will be sent to the club’s American Hockey League affiliate if he does not.
Clarke will re-enter this discussion further down this page.
Overagers Evan Vierling, Declan McDonnell and Ethan Cardwell, who has been signed by the San Jose Sharks, have bid farewell and will all likely end up in the AHL next season.
The immediate pro futures of defenceman Artur Cholach (Vegas) and Braden Hache (Florida) will soon be determined and will go a long way to decide who the Colts will bring back to fill the three overage slots.
Forwards Jacob Frasca and Tyler Savard, as well as defenceman Connor Punnett and goaltender Ben West, are also overage possibilities.
Replacing Thornton will be every bit as tough as trying to fill the vacancies of Clarke, Vierling and Cardwell.
The Beaus — Jelsma and Akey — will become team leaders next season and likely a season after that, too. That’s a good place to start, but things get thin and decidedly uncertain after the two Beaus.
Czech forward Eduard Sale did not report to Barrie after the club selected him in the 2022 Import Draft. If the NHL club who takes Sale in June’s NHL Draft wants him to play major junior hockey in Canada, his status could change, but his presence is a wild card and cannot be counted on.
As for 2004-born forwards Tai York, Cooper Matthews, Roenick Jodoin, and Zach Wigle, they combined for 86 points this season. That’s not exactly a murderer’s row of depth scoring, despite some timely goals and courageous grinding in the playoffs by that quartet.
Coach and general manager Marty Williamson showed probably too much faith in rookie forward Cole Beaudoin, who turned 17 this week, but had little choice once Vierling was ruled out against the Battalion. The youngster performed admirably, but his playing so many tough minutes spoke volumes about the club’s lack of depth up front and how limited the options will be now that the big guns have moved on.
The club drafted winger Shamar Moses in the first round of last week’s OHL Priority Selection. Moses is, by all accounts, a mean and nasty presence, but will require time and patience, a luxury not available regarding Beaudoin over the past fortnight.
Rookies Carter Lowe, who made a gorgeous play to set up a Cardwell goal in Game 4, and Kashawn Aitcheson both looked good in limited play as 16-year-olds.
Aitcheson has displayed a certain 'it' quality that reminds this witness of an entirely different era when toughness, personality and on-ice moxie had much greater value.
The Colts will likely make the playoffs next year, but there is also a sense of being in that dreaded grey area — decent enough to delude yourself into thinking you’re good, but with no realistic hope of winning a playoff series.
And what of the people making the decisions? Well, Williamson is one of few to still hold the duo GM/head coach role. It’s a curious development given that the veteran coach was brought back to Barrie in part because the club wanted more experienced input from more qualified people.
But the Colts are now back to a command structure of a bygone era: Coach/GM reporting to an owner (Howie Campbell), with a smallish staff of limited scope and experience under him. It should be said that assistant coach Phillip Barski and Dylan Smoskowitz, a former Colts player, are both bright, young hockey minds.
Aren’t the Colts lacking someone that can add serious cache, lessen the load on Williamson and bring them in line with the way it’s now done in the OHL?
There are some solutions hiding in plain sight that have local connections, or at least ties to Williamson.
Former NHLer Mike Van Ryn was recently fired by the St. Louis Blues and has worked with Williamson.
Barrie native Darren Rumble is also a former NHL blue-liner and now the lead assistant for the Gatineau Olympiques, the No. 1 team in the country.
Both Rumble and Van Ryn have been mentioned as being in the mix for the Rangers' vacant head-coaching job in Kitchener. Van Ryn may not want to return to junior hockey, but if he does, his resume speaks for itself.
As for Rumble, he has extensive coaching experience in Canada’s other two major junior leagues and a penchant for developing NHLers, often with teams that pull off playoff upsets. Former Rumble proteges include Vegas Golden Knights defenceman Shea Theodore, former QMJHL MVP Conor Garland, right up to two recent winners of that league’s defenceman of the year award in Jordan Spence and Tristan Luneau.
Or how about this pie-in-the-sky scenario: Three-time Stanley Cup winner John Madden didn’t deny he’d be interested in an OHL coaching gig when I asked him about it three years ago. Madden spent his teenage years in Barrie before his playing career took him to the University of Michigan and then the NHL. He's currently an assistant coach with the Arizona Coyotes.
I’m spit-balling here, but do you really think that the circus that surrounded Clarke’s breathtaking talent would have taken place with a guy like Van Ryn, or Rumble, or Madden been around the Colts?
Ah, hard no. Clarke would have been put in a position to take control of the game, rather than let it take control of him, as it did at times since he returned to Barrie.
Or what about this scenario: With another experienced voice around the table, do you think the Colts would have proceeded in that other dreaded grey area, which is the awful in-between position that good teams risk finding themselves come playoff time when you can’t trade your way out of injury trouble?
It happened when Vierling’s and his 108 regular-season/playoff points sat in the scouts/media room during Game 7 at North Bay Memorial Gardens.
It’s a tough call and as that old saying goes, hindsight always provides clarity.
But so do final outcomes. And those were as crystal clear as they were painful in North Bay on Tuesday night.
