This past weekend, the Ontario Hockey Federation (OHF) hosted it’s annual Under 16 Prospects Event with Kitchener, Ontario serving as the host city for this year’s tournament. Over the course of four days, six teams representing six minor hockey associations plied their trade as most of the top 1995s in Ontario Hockey vied for top honours of the season’s first barometer of Minor Midget talent. Competing in the tournament were players representing the following associations, who assembled “All-Star” rosters from players within their territories.

• Greater Toronto Hockey League (GTHL)
• Ontario Minor Hockey Association (OMHA)
• Alliance Hockey (Alliance)
• Hockey Northwestern Ontario (HNO)
• Northern Ontario Hockey Association (NOHA)
• Ottawa District Hockey Association (ODHA)

For in depth tournament results and player statistics, please refer to the U16′s Pointstreak Web-Site:

http://www.pointstreak.com/prostats/scoreboard.html?leagueid=1054&seasonid=5906

Tournament Summary

The Under 16′s served as a decent enough gauge to see where some of the 95′s stand at thus far, and was a good opportunity to get acquainted with most of the top draft eligible Canadian players. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Major Junior Hockey or are just casual followers, the 2011 OHL Priority Selection will be the first year of draft eligiblity for 1995 birth-years within OHL territory. The tournament was hard fought and well contested, and while many of these players looked like they were still shaking off some summer rust as well as having to get acquainted with completely new teammates, it was a good showing.

Without getting too in depth, the top dogs of the tournament were most certainly the OMHA and GTHL clubs. While the OMHA managed to edge the GTHL in both matchups, including a 3-1 win in what would prove to be the decisive victory in the first place game, both club’s featured most of the top players in the tournament. The NOHA managed to squeeze out a bit of a surprise 3rd place finish after stringing together a couple of impressive victories over the ODHA and Alliance teams. The team from HNO was clearly the weak link in the tournament as they struggled to compete at the same level as the other team’s and were winless in six games, while conceding a tournament high 32 goals against.

Overall, the tournament proved to be a good success. The City of Kitchener and the iconic Memorial Auditorium proved to be very accomodating hosts for the tournament, and the level of professionalism associated with the event was most commerable. I was able to take in the weekend portion of the tournament along with my TSR colleague Mike Kloepfer, and we both walked away impressed with the event. Stay tuned tomorrow as we will be reviewing some individual player reports from the tournament, and some of the players who will be player’s to key in on this year in AAA hockey.

Tags: 2011 OHL Draft, 2011 OHL Priority Selection

About the Author: Scott Campbell

Scott, 23, is the Managing Editor for TSR after helping to found the site in 2009. A 2010 graduate from Laurentian University's Sports Administration program, Scott currently attends Indiana State University as a graduate student majoring in Sports Management.