The OHL doesn’t exactly believe in easing into things.
The season starts with a blender full of NHL camp returnees, European imports learning that North American ice has fewer escape routes, 19- and 20-year-olds trying to eat teenagers alive along the wall, and coaches quietly deciding who gets the keys to the good minutes.
The standings don’t mean much yet. The depth charts do.
For prospects, the opening weeks are less about the number beside their name in the box score and more about what happens between whistles. Who gets the puck when the game needs a play? Who is trusted when protecting a lead? Who gets the first power-play unit? Who keeps getting sent over the boards when everyone in the building knows the puck is going to him?
Those are the breadcrumbs.
Adam Novotný returned to Peterborough and immediately grabbed the steering wheel. Ryan Roobroeck arrived in Guelph with 99 OHL goals and decided he might as well get the century mark out of the way. Dima Zhilkin has put the captain’s letter on his chest and played like somebody gave him permission to hit the gas pedal. Jaakko Wycisk is turning puck battles into a personal art project. Alessandro Di Iorio is trying to drag Sarnia into relevance. And Luca Santala needed roughly a week in Kitchener to produce the kind of moment that makes a new fanbase remember your name.
And then there’s London.
The Knights have once again collected enough high-end talent to make the rest of the league wonder whether there is a salary cap for junior hockey.
Apparently not.
The curtain is up.
Let’s get into it.
***
Adam Novotný, LW, Vancouver Canucks
Peterborough: 3G, 3A, 6P, 3GP
Novotný spent the summer signing an NHL contract, attending his first Vancouver training camp and getting a taste of the professional game.
Then he came back to Peterborough and apparently decided three games was enough time to remind everyone why he was drafted 24th overall.
Six points.
Eighteen shots.
Player of the Week.
The Czech winger didn’t return to the OHL looking for a comfortable season. He’s hunting the puck. Entries run through him, he attacks defenders with speed and he isn’t particularly interested in waiting for somebody else to create the next chance.
That’s the difference between putting up points and driving a team.
Vancouver didn’t send Novotný back because the plan went sideways. They sent him back because another year of being the guy could do more for him than another year of occasionally being the kid.
Peterborough is giving him the keys.
He’s driving like he stole the car.
Roster him everywhere.
***
Dima Zhilkin, C, Saginaw Spirit
Saginaw: early-season offensive leader and captain
Some players wear the captain’s letter.
Zhilkin seems to have picked it up and started swinging it.
The Saginaw captain has opened the season with the sort of edge that makes opposing benches uncomfortable. He can make the pretty play, but he’s just as happy turning a puck battle into a demolition derby before popping out with possession.
That’s what makes him such an interesting offensive player.
The release is quick. The hands are clean. But he doesn’t want to live on the perimeter. He wants the puck underneath defenders’ sticks, between their feet and around the net.
He is at his best when the game gets ugly.
And junior hockey gets ugly.
Saginaw has plenty of skill, but Zhilkin is becoming the guy who gives the Spirit some bite. He is not simply wearing the ‘C’ because it looks good on the sweater.
He’s playing like he intends to make everybody else follow him.
***
Ryan Roobroeck, LW, Chicago Blackhawks
Guelph: 2G, 1A, 3P, 4GP
Roobroeck arrived in Guelph with 99 career OHL goals.
The century mark survived approximately one afternoon.
He buried No. 100 during Guelph’s 6-0 demolition of Oshawa, officially opening the next chapter of his OHL career.
The Storm didn’t bring in a 6-foot-4 winger to quietly chip away at somebody else’s offence. They brought him in to make an already dangerous team nastier.
Roobroeck’s shot is the obvious weapon. The next level of his game is everything that happens before he gets to use it.
Get inside.
Win the puck.
Stay around the crease.
Make defenders hate having to box you out.
He doesn’t need to reinvent himself in Guelph. He needs to sharpen the ugly parts of his game until they become just as dependable as the pretty ones.
Chicago has given him an excellent place to do it.
And if you’re a fantasy manager, 100 career goals is a pretty decent reminder of what you’re buying.
***
Jaakko Wycisk, C/RW, Guelph Storm
Guelph: premium playmaker driving the attack
Wycisk is the sort of player who can make a forechecker look like he forgot what he was doing.
He’s built like a safe and plays like he has a remote control for the game.
The first thing that jumps out is the strength. Wycisk can absorb contact along the wall, keep his feet underneath him and somehow emerge with the puck still attached to his stick.
Then comes the fun part.
He looks up.
Suddenly a passing lane appears where there wasn’t one a second earlier.
Wycisk doesn’t need to win races to win shifts. He uses his frame, patience and body positioning to slow the game down just enough for everybody else to play at his speed.
Behind the net is his little laboratory.
He’ll take a hit, spin away, wait half a second longer than the defender wants him to and then slip a pass into an area that looked completely dead.
Roobroeck brings the hammer.
Wycisk is the guy deciding where to swing it.
***
Alessandro Di Iorio, C, Columbus Blue Jackets
Sarnia: 2G, 4A, 6P, 3GP
Di Iorio isn’t sneaking up on anybody anymore.
The Sting handed him the captain’s letter and, almost immediately, he started behaving like the entire offence had been left in his locker.
Six points in three games.
A six-point explosion in a 10-3 win over Ottawa.
And plenty of touches along the way.
Di Iorio’s game has always had some bite to it. He wants the puck, wants to make plays and isn’t afraid of traffic. Now Sarnia needs him to turn those traits into something bigger.
This isn’t just about scoring.
He’s going to be asked to take difficult draws, play against top lines, kill plays before they become chances and then somehow have enough gas left to create at the other end.
That’s the tax that comes with the ‘C’.
So far, he’s paying it.
Buy before the production becomes routine.
***
Luca Santala, C, Kitchener Rangers
Kitchener: 3G, 1A, 4P, 6GP
Santala went from one loaded OHL organization to another.
The difference?
Kitchener has a little more room at the front of the buffet.
The Rangers lost a mountain of talent from their championship team, and Santala walked into town with a giant arrow pointing directly at the top half of the lineup.
He didn’t exactly wait for somebody to hand him the opportunity.
On Oct. 2 against Saginaw, Kitchener was staring at the wrong end of the scoreboard with less than two minutes left.
Santala tied it.
Then, 10 seconds into overtime, he ended it.
Welcome to Kitchener.
Santala brings the kind of toolkit that makes scouts stop at the rink a little longer. Size, soft hands, offensive instincts and enough versatility to play in the middle or on the wing.
The important part is the opportunity.
London had talent everywhere.
Kitchener has room.
That can be a very dangerous combination for a 2027 draft prospect.
Put him on the radar now.
***
Jaxon Cover, RW, Ottawa Senators
London: 1G, 0A, 1P, 1GP
Cover might be the most interesting experiment in London’s giant science project.
He already showed what he can do as an OHL rookie, finishing with 52 points. Now he’s coming back to a team that somehow added even more first-round talent.
The Knights have enough skill that nobody gets to coast on reputation.
Every touch has to be earned.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Cover doesn’t need to carry London. He needs to show that he can make the right play when the game is moving at warp speed and there are three other talented players looking for the same puck.
Can he win his battles?
Can he get inside?
Can he make a play before the defender realizes the puck is leaving his stick?
Those are the questions.
The points will take care of themselves if the answers are yes.
***
Brooks Rogowski, C, Vancouver Canucks
Oshawa: early-season role developing
Rogowski looks like somebody accidentally dropped a power forward into a playmaker’s body.
At 6-foot-7, he is impossible to miss.
The fun part is watching what he does once he has the puck.
Rogowski isn’t simply lumbering toward the crease looking for a rebound. He sees the ice. His reach lets him protect the puck, manipulate defenders and create passing lanes that smaller players don’t have access to.
Last season’s 42 points gave us the first taste.
Now comes the difficult part: making that size a weapon rather than a novelty.
The Canucks didn’t draft him in the second round because he was tall.
They drafted him because there is something interesting underneath all that length.
Watch the hands.
Watch the passing.
Watch what happens when he gets stronger.
That is where the real projection lives.
***
Juho Piiparinen, D, Vegas Golden Knights
London: recently arrived from Tappara
Piiparinen is the latest case study in a simple prospect-development rule:
Play the kid.
Vegas gave him a look in Liiga.
The minutes weren’t there.
So the plan changed.
Now he’s in London, where the puck should be on his stick considerably more often.
That isn’t a punishment.
It’s an investment.
Piiparinen’s skating and puck-moving ability should translate nicely to the smaller North American surface, but the OHL is going to ask different questions. Can he close gaps? Can he absorb contact? Can he make the first pass when somebody is arriving at 100 miles an hour?
Those are the little things that separate “good junior defenceman” from “future NHL defenceman.”
London has enough talent around him that Piiparinen doesn’t need to save the world.
He just needs to play.
And play a lot.
***
The Rest of the Bench: Searching for Minutes
Maksim Sokolovskii — London, Philadelphia Flyers
At 6-foot-8, Sokolovskii is hard to miss and even harder to move once he gets established. The next step is making his size work without sacrificing mobility. London has plenty of blue-line options, so the fight for premium minutes will be worth watching.
Cole Emerton — Sarnia, Chicago Blackhawks
Emerton gives Sarnia an offensive heartbeat from the back end. After a promising rookie season, the next step is taking more control of possessions and becoming the defenceman the Sting wants on the ice when it needs a goal.
Thomas Vandenberg — Ottawa, Los Angeles Kings
Vandenberg is the kind of player coaches tend to trust before fantasy managers notice him. His two-way game gives him a floor, and the question is whether the offence catches up enough to make him more than a dependable minutes-eater.
***
OHL 2026-27 Prospect Watchlist
- Adam Novotný — Vancouver
- Dima Zhilkin — Saginaw
- Ryan Roobroeck — Chicago
- Jaakko Wycisk — Guelph
- Jaxon Cover — Ottawa
- Luca Santala — 2027 eligible
- Alessandro Di Iorio — Columbus
- Brooks Rogowski — Vancouver
- Juho Piiparinen — Vegas
- Cole Emerton — Chicago
The 2027 Pool Is Already Getting Interesting
The 2027 draft is still far enough away that everybody has time to change their mind.
That’s what makes it fun.
Santala is already making himself difficult to ignore. His move to Kitchener gives him a bigger stage and, perhaps more importantly, more room to make mistakes and learn from them. He doesn’t have to fight for every offensive touch on a roster overflowing with first-round talent.
McGregor is another name worth keeping in the notebook.
The former first overall OHL Priority Selection has moved to Brantford and entered his draft year with a much bigger runway. If the offence continues to come, he’ll be one of the names creeping up draft lists before we know it.
And that’s really what October is for.
Not crowning anybody.
Not throwing around “future star” after five games.
Just watching.
Who gets the puck?
Who gets the trust?
Who gets the minutes?
Those answers usually tell us where the story is going.
***
Final Thoughts
The opening month has already given us enough material for a small novel.
Novotný came back to Peterborough with something to prove and immediately started tearing through the OHL.
Roobroeck hit 100 career goals before the season had properly settled into its chair.
Zhilkin put on the ‘C’ and decided leadership apparently meant playing every shift like somebody insulted his family.
Wycisk is making defenders chase ghosts.
Di Iorio is dragging Sarnia forward.
And Santala?
Santala found himself a new home in Kitchener and decided his first big moment should come with the game on the line.
That’s the beauty of the OHL.
The development path is rarely clean.
Sometimes the player needs a bigger role.
Sometimes he needs harder minutes.
Sometimes he needs to leave Finland, cross an ocean and learn that the guy trying to run him through the glass is also somebody’s NHL prospect.
And sometimes the biggest development move is simply putting the puck on a player’s stick and saying:
Go figure it out.
That’s where we’re at now.
The camps are over. The rosters are settling. The excuses are disappearing.
Now the real season starts.
And if I had one name circled for October?
Luca Santala.
The 2027 draft is still months away.
But Kitchener just handed him a blank canvas.
He’s already started painting.
***
If you want to see more hockey talk, you can follow me personally on Twitter/X – @OwenHilsinger
Owen Hilsinger