Dave Cameron Records 500th Win

Dave Cameron behind the Ottawa bench last season [Photo credit Luke Durda/OHL Images].

Ottawa's 7-1 win last night over the Erie Otters kept the team's playoff hopes alive and earned Head Coach Dave Cameron his 500th win in the OHL.

Cameron has been coaching since the mid-1980s, starting as an assistant coach for the Summerside Western Capitals of the IJAHL in 1986.

In 1997, he got his first coaching stint in the OHL as the GM and Head Coach of the Soo Greyhounds. After spending a year in the AHL with the St. John's Maple Leafs, he returned to the OHL as the GM and Head Coach of the Toronto St. Michael's Majors.

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After moving between the AHL and OHL for a few years, he joined the Ottawa Senators as an Assistant Coach in 2011. He spent five years in Ottawa taking over the Head Coaching job in the middle of the 2014-15 season. After he and the Senators parted ways the following season.

After a two-year stint as an Assistant Coach in Calgary, he returned to the OHL once more as the bench boss for the Ottawa 67's.

In total, Cameron has coached 14 seasons at the OHL level. While he has never won an OHL Championship, during the 2022-23 season he won the Brian Kilrea Award otherwise known as the CHL Coach of the Year Award. That same season he took home the OHL Coach of the Year or Matt Leyden Trophy.

While many people will focus on his catastrophic appearance behind Team Canada's bench at this year's World Junior Championship, he has been very successful on the international stage.

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All told he's won medals as a coach for Team Canada on five different occasions. Between 2008 and 2011 he won a gold and two silver medals behind the bench of three consecutive World Junior Championship squads. He added a World Championship gold medal to his shelf during the 2015-16 season before finally picking up a second World Junior Championship gold medal during the 2021-22 tournament.

While this year with Ottawa didn't go how he or his team wanted, Cameron is still a respected OHL coach who shows no sign of slowing down despite turning 67 this coming July.

Since the 67's failed to beat Brantford this afternoon they were eliminated from playoff contention for the first time in Cameron's tenure behind the Ottawa bench.

He and the rest of Ottawa's staff will go into the offseason looking to reset and come back stronger next year.