The Milton Menace have had a fairly busy offseason.
After missing the playoffs in their inaugural season, the team had to watch the entire league shutdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
One of the bigger transactions the team made was a change at assistant coach after Peter Drikos took the Head Coaching role with the Toronto Patriots.
The Menace managed to sign Daniel Nikandrov, someone General Manager and Head Coach, Dan Del Monte, has close ties with.
The Milton Menace have also made several trades over the last few weeks.
The team acquired both F Andrew Horsley and RD Patrick Klazer.
The 19-year old Horsley was traded from the Toronto Patriots. Del Monte is a big fan of the power forward.
Patrick Klazer was traded from the Burlington Cougars in exchange for Conor LePage. LePage had been acquired through a previous deal.
Del Monte says the right-handed defenceman has some serious potential.
The Milton Menace were a young team heading into their inaugural season, with Del Monte liking them to an expansion team.
The team quickly acquired OHL veterans in CJ Clarke and Hayden Davis throughout the season; however, the team continued to slide down the standings and ended up as sellers at the trade deadline.
Those deals allowed for young leaders like Captain Jordan Stock and defenceman Freddie Ilias to step up.
Del Monte talks about trying to build the team’s identity last year, and how it’s shaping up heading into the next season.
Reflecting on how the league was shutdown in March, Del Monte says it’s unfortunate for the older players that had what could have been their last chance at a championship in the OJHL taken away from them, including former Menace players Clarke and Davis. From the perspective of management, he feels for the teams that were buyers at the deadline because they gave up major assets not knowing the season would end prematurely.
As it stands next year, there is no set timeline for when the OJHL will return to action. The NHL is expecting training camps to open back up in July to be able to return to play and finish their 2019-2020 season, but the OJHL and NHL are in two entirely different worlds of hockey. Del Monte says they’re talking with Hockey Canada to do whatever they can to move the process forward. He’s just hoping the season will start, whether that’s on-time or a month late.
Anyone will take hockey being a month late at this point in the pandemic.
