Excited visitors made the long drive up from St. Thomas to Barrie on Saturday morning.
It was the Vaughan family’s second such journey in the past week and they had good reason: Their son, Parker, a right-winger for the Elgin-Middlesex Canucks, was taken fifth overall by the Colts in Friday night’s Ontario Hockey League Priority Selection.
“I’m speechless,” Marc Vaughan, Parker’s dad, said while apologizing he could not provide more colourful answers to a nosy writer’s questions.
During a short conversation before the family was about to go in and meet Colts brass, the elder Vaughan gave two pieces of feedback that will be music to local fans’ ears: His son will report to Barrie and everyone is happy at his selection.
“We are all really excited,” said Vaughan, who was a player for his hometown Jr. B squad more than three decades ago and had a four-year career at the University of Waterloo, where he played on an Ontario University Athletics championship squad that lost in the national final in overtime.
“We made a commitment — he was going to whatever team took him. We are just very happy to be here and just happy how it has (turned out).”
The Vaughans made the trek north on Sunday to watch the Colts play the Oshawa Generals in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals series.
“We knew then that they really liked him,” Vaughan said of his son.
Asked to give a quick assessment of his son’s game and style, he was direct and to the point — a bit like how his son plays.
“A grinding power forward with a great shot,” said the proud father.
A scout from another OHL team provided context to the Colts’ highest pick since they took Brandt Clarke fourth overall in 2019.
“They went steady and safe and they got a good one,” said the scout from another Eastern Conference team, adding it was an astute selection because it mitigated risk associated with a handful of players in this year’s draft who are keeping their options open about pursuing NCAA opportunities.
Colts scouting director Mark Seidel, during a brief chat on Friday night, said he estimated there were about five players who slid down the draft chart because they gave indications they were going to college.
Seidel said it factored in the Colts’ decision to take Parker Vaughan and his firm OHL intentions.
“When you pick at fifth overall, you want to get a player who is going to come here,” said Seidel.
The Colts had three more selections on Friday night, taking a pair of kids from Peterborough with back-to-back picks in the second round: left-winger Ben Bowen and defenceman Noah Gaudet-Barton. Gaudet-Bowen played U16 AAA in Oshawa this season, while Bowen played for the Greater Toronto Hockey League champion Vaughan Kings.
The Kings were also the team where the Colts wrapped up their Friday night selections by taking another defenceman, Cole Emerton.
He is the son of Chris Emerton, who was one of the leading contributors who helped the Colts win the Sunderland Cup in 1993. That Jr. B squad was the forerunner of today’s major junior version that arrived in town as an expansion franchise two years later.
It was a surprise that Emerton was available to the Colts at 50.
“We’re ecstatic,” Seidel said, adding he had expected Emerton to be taken long before he was still available.
As previously mentioned, this year’s draft had a lot of moving parts and unresolved issues around certain top prospects. A few more than usual told inquiring teams that, at least for now, that they are going to college, a situation made more complicated by the British Columbia Hockey League’s breaking away from underneath the Hockey Canada umbrella.
As a result, many 16- and 17-year-olds are using that western league to buy some extra time to develop and having to make a commitment to which branch of the hockey tree they are going to pursue: major junior or NCAA.
One notable player in that regard is Barrie Colts U16 AAA centre Logan Hawery. The Barrie native was captain of the Ontario Minor Hockey Association championship squad this season — the Colts lost in the quarterfinals of the OHL Cup to the eventual champions from Oakville — and was considered a slam dunk to go inside the top half of the first round. But Hawery fell all the way down to No. 20, where he was snapped up by the London Knights.
Hawery had told teams he was planning to go to school, but some now wonder if he will report to the Knights to take advantage of the club’s legendary record of producing championship-calibre teams and churning out professionals.
That Lindsay Hofford, Hawery’s coach this year on the U16 Colts, has a longtime association with the Knights only seems to add another layer of intrigue to where Hawery ends up.
Two other U16 Colts went earlier in the first round on Friday night; centre Alex McLean was taken ninth overall by the Guelph Storm and another forward, Nathan Amidovski, went 11th to the Ottawa 67’s.
Three more U16 Colts went in the second round — Kent Greer (North Bay), Blake Gowan (Peterborough) and Troy Patton (Mississauga) — while Elliot Arnett (Owen Sound) was taken with the final selection of the third round that wrapped up Friday night’s proceedings.
Rounds 4 through 15 took place later Saturday.
