in late rounds of ohl draft, kingston frontenacs gm cooper looks for, among other things, staying power
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goaltender nathan ferris from belleville, ont., poses for an ohl photographer after the kingston frontenacs made him their 13th-round pick at the 2026 ohl priority selection at slush puppie place in kingston on saturday, june 13, 2026. (photo by gare joyce/kingston whig-standard)
hockey executives are presumed to be as loyal and sentimental as day traders, utterly immune to even the slightest case of the feels.
so, when the ontario hockey league decided to reboot its priority selection as a live, in-arena event evoking the last millennium instead of the cold-blooded online iteration, the junior loop’s execs believed those would be touched were the 15- and 16-year-olds in the stands and their families. the throwback was intended to pluck the heartstrings and test the nerves of the kids and the marks — uh, their kin.
those who draw paycheques from the teams would have to switch from the war room at their home base to a table on the floor of an arena, but that inconvenience aside, the pros would go about their business as usual. so the thinking went.
yet, consider the sworn testimony of kingston frontenacs general manager kory cooper a couple of minutes after the last pick in the 2026 priority selection saturday afternoon.
“in a weird way it’s almost harder to make the selections at the very end of the day when there are still people in the building,” cooper said. “you want them to have that moment. in those late rounds we try to find guys who we know as players and done something to impress us over the course of the year … the guys who stayed that course.”
and those who stayed the course on the ice of course stayed on longest in the stands in their saturday finest. slaves to logic, realists, would have discreetly been hitting the exits, inconsolable in their grief — accepting their once-in-a-life has been cruelly reduced by that irrecoverable one.
those who stuck around longest put in a full day — doors at slush puppie place opened on saturday at 9 a.m. with the start of the second round, pick no. 21, and by four p.m., the process had reached the 15th and final round. breaks were minimal but necessary for hydration, most of the body water lost pouring through sweat glands in the palms.
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in the second round, selections were made seven- or eight-minute intervals, when you allow for the draftees’ hugging fam and friends and teammates, their strolling down to the floor, their marching the length of room to the stage, their donning sweaters and posing with management. but for the very occasional no-show each teen had his procession and ceremony.
by the time the 13th, 14th and 15th rounds rolled the selections were being made with auctioneers’ rapidity, as if denying those yet again uncalled an opportunity to get the names of the teams bypassing them. it was akin to ripping off band-aids, done quickly to minimize the pain.
in the 13th round, with the 251th pick overall, cooper selected nathan ferriss, a goaltender with the quinte red devils who, according to stats provided by the league, posted impressive numbers during this past season (a goals-against average of 1.93 in 17 regular-season games, a .912 save percentage in the ohl cup). a belleville native, ferriss had watched five of his quinte teammates have their names over the two days, two of them in the first round (centre lauchlan whelan to windsor and right-winger andrew laurin to ottawa).
kingston didn’t seem in particular need of netminding futures — the team has on hand 2024 second-rounder gavin betts, who earned ohl rookie second-team all-star honours this season and matt minchak, who landed in the ohl prospects game, as well as royden smith, a fifth-rounder from last year’s priority selection who served as a back-up when minchak was injured. it would look like there’s not a lot of room for ferriss at the inn, that he’s a year away from being a year away. at least in the frontenacs organization.
then again, the frontenacs do know him. ferriss works with the team’s goaltending coach, tyson tiechmann, himself a belleville native and quinte red devils alumnus.
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to ferriss’s mind, he’ll be more comfortable than most of kingston’s 2025 and 2026 draftees when they assemble at the invista centre next weekend for prospects camp. he’ll be on the ice at an arena where he’s played dozens of times, further, his performance will be scrutinized by a position coach that he has spent dozens hours working with.
“i think it sets up for me to play well,” ferriss said. “to be get a chance to compete for a place with the team in our area is a dream come true.”
ferriss suggested he wasn’t at all nervous about not getting selected when saturday afternoon wore on, even though there were just 50 picks left — with more than 83 per cent of the selections spoken for, anyone chosen in these late stages might not feel like much a priority. if he was truly as optimistic as he was letting on, then that’s a top-grade case of staying the course.
cooper talked about finding “guys we know as players” in the late rounds and on saturday his team did put out the call to another quinte red devil in the 15th round, right-winger lawson liboiron-minifie, another quinte red devil. just 10 picks were left in the priority selection, which is like 10 seconds to midnight.
left-winger brock lamarche didn’t have to wait as long as ferriss and liboiron-minifie — the frontenacs selected him in the eighth round. but the cornwall native, who played for the eastern ontario wild last season, said he believes a geographical bias comes into play in the priority selection.
“they say you’re going to get seen if you just play the game, so i wanted to stay in cornwall rather than going away to play,” he said. “but i think there’s a lot of attention that goes to the gthl (greater toronto hockey league) and a lot less to some other regions than they deserve.”
lamarche inferred the frontenacs backyard, belleville to cornwall, might fall into that category — that kingston tapped some locals because they recognized the value that others missed. maybe. after all, ferriss did backstop a quinte team that knocked off the vaughn kings team that featured first overall pick centre kane cloutier and the first blueliner selected, adrian sgro who went fifth.
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other teams weighed the risks and rewards of spending a pick on a u.s. player with a commitment for next season to programs south of border. aspiring to be the next-gen league bully to rival london knights, the brantford bulldogs took their home-run swing and spent a fifth-rounder on drew daley, a defenceman from buffalo, n.y. who played last season for shattuck-st mary’s in faribault, minnesota.
daley would likely have been the top pick in the show friday night had he not committed to the u.s. national development team program in michigan. the bulldogs will have some coaxing to do — daley is represented by the bartlett group, an agency whose star-spangled nhl clients such as logan cooley and clayton keller came through the usndt pipeline. zach hyman and family, the owners and proprietors of the brantford organization, will make their case.
cooper wound up taking three u.s. prospects, highest among them ninth-rounder nash wilford, a left-winger also from the buffalo area. with those u.s. teens, the gm can point to the successes of nolan snyder, robin kuzma and minchak last season in kingston, three who’d have be most likely to land in the ushl rather than major junior.
the gm won’t have to sell his team’s merits to the likes of lamarche, ferriss and liboiron-minifie — they’ll have no trouble making it to kingston for prospects camp next weekend.
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