Another season of OHL hockey is underway for the five-time Memorial Cup-winning Oshawa Generals, and many fans hope to see an improvement.
The Generals ended last year with a 26-36-6 record, good for 8th in the east. They lost four games to one in the first round to the Ottawa 67s.
This season, however, is a chance at a fresh start for a young Oshawa Generals team.
Terry Johnston has been the Generals announcer since 2007 and has witnessed events such as the Memorial Cup win in 2015, the first since 1990.
He’s looking forward to this year’s lineup.
“We had a young team last year, and this year we got Owen Griffin, Ben Danford, Matthew Buckley,” he said. “A couple of these young guys are really good. Beckett Sennecke, as well, and and so they’re these guys, and they’re stepping up.”
Sennecke is a second-year General who well-liked by fans and scouts, such as Aaron Itovich, a Montreal-based scout for Dobber Prospects.
“His playmaking is phenomenal,” he said. “It is the type where he may not rack up as many points as he should, but you can see where he finds lanes, creates space, works well under pressure, and that’s the type of pressure that translates to the NHL.”
In his third OHL season and second with the Generals, Jacob Oster gained more confidence over the offseason after his experience with the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings.
“The one position where you want confidence to matter,” Itovich said, “because you have objects flying at you at 100 mph, and you need to be able to have a cleaner headspace to stop them.”
Even with the playoff appearance against the OHL’s top team last season, fans such as John Savage, a Sport Management student at Durham College, said the Generals are still exciting.
“But I don’t know if they’re going to do that well or even make the playoffs, ’cause they seem to be tanking,” he said.