Steelheads success story
A pre-season favourite to be a top contender within the Eastern Conference of the Ontario Hockey League, it instead looked for a while as though the Mississauga Steelheads were going to be the bust of the 2016-2017 campaign.
Through 26 games of the ’16-17 season, the Steelheads were in last place overall in the 20-team OHL with a record of 6-14-6. At one point, Mississauga lost nine straight games and rumours were swirling that first-year head coach James Richmond was about to be fired.
But then forward Spencer Watson and defenseman Vili Saarijarvi — a pair of high-end veterans who had been acquired in trades — began to round into form after recovering from major injuries and world-class center Michael McLeod started to produce offensively after a slow start.
Following that league-worst 6-14-6 beginning, the Steelheads posted a record of 28-7-7 over the last 42 games of the regular season and finished as the no. 2 seed in the 10-team Eastern Conference.
Three rounds of the playoffs later, the Steelheads are Eastern Conference champions, having swept the no. 1 seed Peterborough Petes in four straight games to advance to the OHL finals.
Mississauga ousted the no. 7 seed Ottawa 67’s in six games in the first round of the playoffs before upending the no. 3 seed Oshawa Generals in five games in the second round and then completing the sweep of Peterborough on an eight-game winning streak.
Steelheads 41-year old general manager James Boyd, who has spent more than half his life in the OHL, said the tough start to the season was difficult to take.
“It was hard to stomach for sure,” said Boyd, who played four seasons in the OHL before coaching in the league for 16 years and then assuming full-time GM duties with the Steelheads to begin the ’16-17 campaign.
“The losses were mounting but we tried our best to keep things in perspective,” Boyd recalled of the poor start to this season. “Despite our record we weren’t out of the race. We really just had to re-focus and we established a goal of aiming to be playing our best hockey come playoff time.”
Goal-tending has become a Mississauga strength as this season has gone on.
Overager Matthew Mancina — acquired from Peterborough early in the season — has had to overcome a pair of injuries, including one that sidelined him for the first round of the playoffs.
Meanwhile, 2000 birth-year rookie Jake Ingham fashioned a regular-season record of 17-6-3 to go with a 2.69 goals against average and .907 save percentage as an outstanding backup to the veteran Mancina. Ingham then backstopped the Steelheads to the opening-round playoff win over Ottawa before Mancina returned from injury and went the distance in the series wins over Oshawa and Peterborough.
A resident of Barrie, Ont., the 6-foot-3, 180-pound Ingham, who is not eligible for the National Hockey League draft until 2018, turned in a standout performance at the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge that was held in Sault Ste. Marie in November. Ingham starred for the Team Canada silver-medal squad in front of numerous members from his mother’s side of the family who reside in the Soo.
As the Steelheads have gone from the cellar to Eastern Conference champions in a span of those 42 regular-season games and 15 playoff matches, Boyd gave credit to the foundation of the program.
“Sure, we would liked to have seen this hockey all year long but to his credit J.R. (James Richmond) has done a great job keeping a long-term perspective,” Boyd noted. “The foundation of his program is really skills-based. Every day the guys are doing skills and working toward the long term so it’s nice to see the guys reaping the benefits so far in the playoffs.
“It’s a credit to our coaching staff because it’s not an easy situation when everyone is picking you to be the best team in the Conference and then you stumble out of the gate,” said Boyd. “They’ve done a tremendous job of staying the course.”
Meanwhile, Richmond as a 52-year old rookie head coach in the OHL, noted how the Steelheads managed to turn the season around.
“First of all, it’s an honour to coach these guys,” Richmond began. “I think it took awhile for our guys to understand the way that we wanted to play and when they finally came together and started to see success they really gelled as a group.”
PHOTO: Rookie goalie Jake Ingham and outstanding defenseman Nicolas Hague show their happy faces after the Mississauga Steelheads won the OHL’s Eastern Conference playoff championship. (Photo by Terry Wilson.)
Program is skilled-based lets players play and use there skill set not a bad concept for junior hockey
Unfortunately, no matter how good the Steelheads may be, they have trouble getting people to come out and watch. Like the Battalion before them, the brain trust behind this club likely has had a few discussions about their future in Mississauga.