If you watch junior hockey long enough, you start to notice trends. Tendencies that soon become accepted norms.
For example, the London Knights are by a wide margin the biggest producer of National Hockey Leaguers among the Canadian Hockey League’s 60 teams. The Knights' talent pipeline started gushing around the time of the club’s first Memorial Cup championship in 2005 and there are now 32 former Knights on NHL rosters.
Other CHL clubs have their moments, of course. Out west, the Edmonton Oil Kings and Winnipeg Ice rosters are stocked with future NHLers. And for much of the past 20 years, the Kelowna Rockets have done the same, especially along their blue-line. Down east, the Halifax Mooseheads seem to have a new NHL-calibre forward every season.
It’s not quite to the same extent but the Colts are making their mark too. The Colts had 14 players on NHL rosters on opening night, third-most in the OHL behind the Knights and Soo Greyhounds.
The Colts' defence alumni is nothing to sniff at – Aaron Ekblad, Rasmus Andersson to name two – but there is an especially good group of forwards right now. Andrei Svechnikov is the leading scorer (11GP, 7G, 8A) on the NHL’s best team, the Carolina Hurricanes. Though he’s off to a rough start, Mark Scheifele is still very much an elite NHL centre. Andrew Mangiapane is scoring at an almost point-a-game pace for the Calgary Flames.
Though not to the same level as that trio, Andreas Athanasiou (Los Angeles) and Kevin Labanc (San Jose) are top-six forwards on their teams.
Oskar Olausson could soon be joining the Colts forward parade to the NHL. The Swede, who turned 19 on Wednesday, came to Barrie after an impressive training camp with the Colorado Avalanche. The Avs had picked him in the first round (28th overall) in the NHL Draft in July.
“I came to Barrie because it was the best way (to get to) the NHL,” Olausson said during a recent phone chat with BarrieToday. “I also want to improve my English.”
Had he not been picked by the Avalanche, a team already loaded with high-calibre forwards, he may have stuck around longer in the Mile High City and taken much longer getting to Barrie. Olausson had two goals in exhibition play over three games and averaged almost 17 minutes of ice time.
He’s scored nine times and added six assists in 12 games with the Colts so far and is currently on a five-game point streak.
According to the excellent Colts blog kept by Ryan Noble (@verybarriecolts), Olausson has points in all but one game so far.
Considering that Olausson was the second-to-last player picked in the summer’s Import Draft, Colts head coach and general manager Marty Williamson must be smiling like a Chesire cat, the animal that Noble has made a theme of his blog.
Kyle Woodlief is the chief scout for Red Line Report, an independent scouting newsletter that counts most NHL teams as his clients. Woodlief was bullish on Olausson last season, ranking him 19th overall, nine spots higher than he was drafted by Colorado.
“He can either shoot or pass,” said Woodlief. “(His) quick stick and mind makes him hard to read (and) he has swagger, a great touch, marvellous vision and a powerful release.”
Safe to say, Olausson has come to Barrie as advertised, likely even better, which is not an easy thing to do for a European player finding his way in a new country. Perhaps because of the lack of familiarity of his new surroundings, Olausson didn’t have much to offer about Colts that have come before him, though he acknowledged the list of names he was asked about is impressive.
Does he look up to anyone in particular?
“Not really any hockey players,” said Olausson.
He did say that fellow Swede Andersson, who is now Mangiapane’s teammate in Calgary, provided him a reference point where he was going in Canada.
For now, Olausson’s main goal is what’s right in front of him: keep playing well and get back to the world junior tournament in Edmonton. The Swedes went almost 15 years without losing a pool game at the world juniors until being beaten by Russia and the U.S. last year in the Edmonton bubble.
Sweden was eventually eliminated by Finland in the quarter-finals, ending a tournament marked by COVID disruptions that decimated their lineup and coaching staff.
Olausson was pointless in four games.
To the extent that he gave anything away during a recent phone chat, he clearly wants to do better this year.
“I want to go back to the World Junior and win it,” he said. “And then come back here and hopefully (make a run) for a Cup.”
