He thought it would be pretty cool just to hear his name mentioned on draft night.
Last night was the OHL Selection Draft, where teams from the OHL Major Junior A circuit go through the process of selecting players by which they can re-stock the cupboards. That’s how it works in the OHL, you lose some, you win some. Some of your players get drafted in the NHL Entry Draft, some graduate to other programs, and some retire from the league. They’re replaced at the other end by prospects primarily from Ontario’s premium AAA hockey programs.
One such player involved in all of this is Braeside’s Kaden McGregor, a 5’11” centre playing for the Ottawa Valley Titans AAA program.
He did hear his name last night, in fact before anybody else heard theirs.
McGregor was selected first overall by the Peterborough Petes in last night’s draft, an honour that adds the Jack Ferguson Award to the McGregor family trophy case. The award is given to the player drafted first into the league for the 2025 draft.
Kaden is the son of Lisa and Stacey McGregor, and is the latest blue-chip athlete to emerge from this small-town Ontario family. The senior McGregor’s are both teachers in the this part of the Ottawa Valley, with dad Stacey working at the same high school that Kaden attends, St. Joseph’s High School in Renfrew, Ontario.
In fact, Stacey is Kaden’s high school hockey coach, and together they took their show to Sudbury, as the Jaguars tore through the OFSAA tournament all the way to the final before being finally topped by Sacred Heart Crusaders of Walkerton, Ontario.
One considerable side benefit of the draft is that Kaden won’t have to change his hockey colour palette. The Titans wear a maroon-garnet coloured jersey, as do the St. Joseph’s Jaguars. He’ll fit right into the Petes’ jersey without the blink of an eye. When he scans the ice, it’ll still be those maroon jerseys he sees as the good guys, so no big transition there.
Kaden describes himself as a two-way centre, which if true, makes me wonder a bit, because as I survey his stats, it makes me wonder how much time he actually spends in his own end, and I mean that in a complimentary sense, since his offensive numbers are nothing short of explosive. It’s been said that the best defence is a good offence, and hockey purists may rightfully quibble with that, but sakes alive, this kid seems to have the puck on his stick the entire game. And he knows how to protect it as well. So little opportunity for the other team to get anything going offensively themselves. If I was an opposing coach, I’d put a guy on him like a freaking bath towel, and even have the guy sit on McGregor’s bench, right beside him, with one of those tether-bungee cord thingies you see daycares use to keep the Kiddy Train moving along safely. Except I’d be using handcuffs.
I watched a game during the OFSAA tournament in Sudbury, and it seemed the other team had three guys on him. It must have worked, since they held McGregor to four goals before losing to the Jaguars in overtime. In his six games in Sudbury, McGregor notched an eye-watering 21 goals for St. Joe’s, without doubt being named to the tournament’s all-star team.
He compiled a 38-44-82 campaign for the Titans in 29 regular season matches, before going 11-13-24 in nine playoff games, leading the Titans to the HEO — Hockey Eastern Ontario —crown and earning the Titans a trip to the OHL Cup. He went 3-8-11 in five games at that tournament, before the Titans finally fell in the quarter-finals to the eventual champion Toronto Jr. Canadiens.
Kaden is the latest member of the St. Joseph’s Hockey Canada Skills Academy to graduate the program and find work in the Ontario Hockey League. That list includes Cobden’s Jack Quinn, who now plays in the NHL with the Buffalo Sabres, but also includes other players taken in the first two rounds of the OHL draft. But this is the first time that a player from that hockey factory has been chosen first overall, a tribute to Kaden, his dad, and all the other people who make that program happen and produce the players that they do. And the same goes for the Ottawa Valley Titans, who had several players waiting to hear their names as well, with the second round taking place later today.
So congratulations to Kaden and the rest of the McGregor clan in Braeside, as these are exciting times to be sure. But this is also a time where good hockey people, in fact just good people, get rewarded for all the time and hard work that they’ve put in over the years to arrive at a morning such as this.
They’ll remember today forever. And so will the rest of us.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 