The Toronto-area minor hockey association has developed some of the best players in the NHL today, so we put together a Dream Team of alumni.
So recently, I was thinking about the OHL Cup - the big spring tournament for under-16s that is a scouting magnet for the Ontario League draft - and how many future stars I've seen playing in the tournament.
Teams from all over the province compete in the OHL Cup, as do a couple of American squads featuring players from states in the OHL's territory.
I remember seeing Connor McDavid, Sam Bennett and Josh Ho-Sang all on the same Toronto Marlboros squad (they lost to Robby Fabbri and the Mississauga Rebels in the final). I also remember a barnburner OHL Cup championship game between the Don Mills Flyers and Toronto Red Wings that included Adam Fantilli, Shane Wright, Brennan Othmann and Brandt Clarke - as well as about a half-dozen other future NHL draft picks.
Which got me thinking: Could a team of GTHL alumni win the Stanley Cup? The Greater Toronto League is where all the players mentioned above came from, and many other NHL stars got their start there, too. I put together a prospective roster, and based on the outcome, I'm pretty confident they could win it all:
Forwards
Mitch Marner - Connor McDavid - Jason Robertson
Jeff Skinner - Jack Hughes - Jordan Kyrou
Sam Bennett - John Tavares - Zach Hyman
Tom Wilson - Scott Laughton - Cole Perfetti
D. Strome, Seguin
Defense
Quinn Hughes - Dougie Hamilton
Jakob Chychrun - Brent Burns
Darnell Nurse - Alex Pietrangelo
Pelech
Goalies
Jordan Binnington
Spencer Martin
The first thing you will likely notice is that this team is deeper down the middle than any NHL squad and that the top wingers are some of the highest scorers around. We've also got physicality, we've got grit, and if we need someone to drop the gloves, Tom Wilson happens to be one of the best at it. Mitch Marner and Scott Laughton can kill penalties.
The blueline is a sublime mix of skill, size, mobility, puckhandling and physicality - not to mention youth and experience. We've got a Norris Trophy winner in Burns, not to mention two players who could win the Norris any time now in Hughes and Hamilton. Heck, the team is so deep that the No. 7 is Adam Pelech, one of the best shutdown defensemen around.
The goaltending may have looked like a problem before this season began, but Binnington is a Stanley Cup winner who looks to have regained his form: His goals saved above expected is among the best in the league, and a .919 save percentage is pretty good on a middling Blues team.
If we really want to get into the weeds, we could even have our own pipeline led by the likes of Fantilli, Wright, Othmann and Clarke.
This is all a long way of saying that when it comes to the concentration of talent, no youth league can beat the GTHL. The fact that players will move into the territory in order to play there certainly helps, as does the city's hockey industry itself: Both Jack and Quinn Hughes may be American, but they played for the Toronto Marlboros because dad Jim had been working for the NHL's Maple Leafs (by the time Luke Hughes played in the OHL Cup, the family had moved back to Michigan, so Luke skated for Detroit Little Caesars).
The latest phenom to come onto hockey's radar is 15-year-old Braidy Wassilyn, a 6-foot-2 scoring machine with the Markham Majors. Wassilyn is the favorite to go first in this year's OHL draft, and if you were happening to wonder: Yes, the Majors play in the GTHL.