NEWS

 

The Pickering Panthers celebrate winning the 2021-22 OJHL championship by hoisting the Buckland Cup at Scotiabank Pond in Toronto Sunday. (Photo by Paul Mauceri / OJHL Images)

BY JIM MASON / OJHL Communications

The focus quickly shifts for the freshly crowned champions of the Ontario Junior Hockey League.

The Pickering Panthers celebrated deep into Sunday night after defeating the Toronto Jr Canadiens 4-3 at Scotiabank Pond in Toronto to win the best-of-seven Ontario Junior Hockey League Nutrafarms Championship Series four games to three. It’s the first league title in franchise history for the Durham Region squad.

Now, it’s on to Estevan.

Saskatchewan, that is, where Pickering will represent the OJHL at the 2022 Centennial Cup presented by Tim Hortons from May 19-29.  

The Panthers fly west Tuesday.

They’ll play in the opening game of the cup tournament Thursday, May 19, against the Red Lake Miners, the Superior International Junior Hockey League champs from Northwestern Ontario. Face-off is 2 p.m. ET. 

Rob Pearson, the Coach of the Year in the OJHL, may not have been able to picture all of this during training camp last September at the rec complex in Pickering.

“To be honest, we lost seven or eight guys just before camp and we were scrambling,” said the former NHLer, who doubles as general manager in Pickering. “We went out and grabbed a couple of guys. And then once you grab a couple, a couple of others say ‘I wanna go there because he’s going there’. That helps out quite a bit.

“We just slowly built. We kept adding the right pieces and hoping it would come together. And we’re lucky it did.”

Ryan Johnstone scored the Game 7 winner with 37.7 seconds remaining in regulation Sunday in the all-GTA championship series.

“When you look at the season, you see JRC win the title for finishing first overall and us coming in right behind them,” Pearson said during the on-ice celebration. “To have both of us in the final and for it to go to seven games and for it to go right down to the last minute, it just shows how great their team is and how great our team is. It really could have been any bounce at the time and we got the bounce.”

Pickering Captain Brendan Tomilson, who was named the recipient of the Brent Ladds Trophy as the OJHL playoff MVP, was already thinking Centennial Cup.

“I think it will be a tough tournament with a different format this year due to COVID,” the former Lindsay Muskie and Halifax Moosehead defenceman said moments after being presented the Buckland Cup. “But we get to play four games guaranteed. We can take advantage of that and make the quarter or semi-finals.”

All nine CJHL member league champions and the host team will participate in the national championship event. Regional championships were not held this season due to the pandemic’s effect on scheduling.

For more on the Centennial Cup including the tournament schedule, click on the link:

https://www.hockeycanada.ca/en-ca/national-championships/men/national-junior-a/2022