SERIES PREVIEW: Ottawa 67’s face off against the Kingston Frontenacs for Round 1
The Ottawa 67’s are set to take on the Kingston Frontenacs for the first round of the 2026 OHL Playoffs presented by Nissan.
“It’s super exciting,” said Shaan Kingwell. “I know the whole city is going to be behind us for this hopefully long playoff run, and I can’t wait to get it going on Friday.”
“For many guys in the room, myself included, it’s our first OHL playoffs, so we’re all very excited,” said goaltender Jaeden Nelson. “It’s exciting to play meaningful hockey still, but this first round is hopefully just the start of what we want to achieve.”
“You work in the summer and all season to be here,” said Frankie Marrelli. “You just want to make the most of it and have no regrets.”
The 67’s and the Frontenacs met eight times throughout the 2025-26 OHL season, with the Barber Poles pulling out a win across six of the matchups.
“We know Kingston very well, with them being a divisional rival,” said Nelson. “The games we played against them have always been close on the ice; we know their guys well, they know ours.”
“They are a fast team, very structured,” said Kingwell. “I think if we play to our strengths of getting on the forecheck, that’s our best attribute of our team, we’ll be fine.”
“I think we have the speed, the skill, the heart, and the hardness to really exploit their defence,” said Teddy Spitznagel. “We need to be heavy on the forecheck; there’s not a lot of room for entry-plays as the ice gets condensed out there.”
“Getting pucks in behind their defence and really wearing them down will be big factors for our success.”
“They’re not gonna be easy,” said Nelson. “But we know what we have to bring, and I am very confident in our group and how hard we work, and our mindsets are ready for it.”
Both teams had what could have been a bit of a preview of the series in their final game of the OHL season, with Ottawa securing a decisive 6-1 win, albeit with the Frontenacs benching several key players.
The 67’s enter the playoff series as a well-oiled machine, having won seven of their last 10, with the special teams really tightening up.
“We knew going into the season our defensive corps was gonna be the backbone for us,” said assistant coach Norm Milley.
“As long as I’ve been around hockey, the best teams going forward have been the teams with the best defensive style, and our d-corps is really good,” said Milley. “We have veteran leadership back there, we added some size on the backend with Bedkowski, we picked up Bewick as well; they’ve been really solid for us, and our goaltending has been outstanding.”
“If you look at the stats, we’re third or fourth in goals for, but sometimes in the office we’re wondering why we are struggling to score goals,” he said.
“(We score) through committee, it’s the way our team is built,” he said. “It’s all about the next guy up, everyone helps contribute to it, and I think that will help us going into the playoffs.”
Despite the expected jump in physicality in the playoffs, a big focus for the team is to limit penalties.
“Going into the playoffs, we want to be a more disciplined team,” said assistant coach Norm Milley. “We want to limit the amount of penalties in the offensive zone—the tripping, the hooking.”
The team has shown that capacity before, as ahead of the OHL trade deadline, they took the lowest amount of penalties in the league. Even now, they are the sixth most disciplined team, finishing with 713 penalty minutes on the year.
While both teams have gotten quite familiar with each other over the course of the long season, there’s one Frontenac who is very familiar to the squad: former Ottawa 67’s forward Jack Dever.
“It’s definitely different seeing him on the other side of the ice, a little weird,” said Frankie Marrelli, who had played with Dever from 2021 to 2026. “But, we’re both competitors, and we both love when stuff like this happens.”
“It’ll be a good series, we’re gonna compete hard against each other, and I’m happy I get to play in a series with him.”
Alongside the return of For The X, this group has adopted one of junior hockey’s biggest playoff traditions for this year’s run: bleaching their hair.
“We had a vote, it was either bleached hair or mullets,” said Spitznagel. “We decided on bleached hair, so now my hair is a little bit brighter,” he laughed.
“I think we look good out there; we bought in.”
“It’s a good hockey tradition,” said Kingwell. “It doesn’t quite look the best, but that’s kinda the joke, I guess.”
“We’ve seen previous 67’s teams do it,” said Marrelli. “The one team that won it had the bleached hair, so we hope to follow in those footsteps.”
“The closeness of this team will get shown in the playoffs, as it has in tough times and hard moments,” he said.
“We have that here, every guy bought in and was excited to do it, we even got members of our staff doing it,” he said. “It just goes to show the support we have and how dialled in we are for this.”
Not every player got fully bleached hair, as Nelson opted for just highlights.
“I tried to do something a bit more manageable,” he laughed. “I’ve done the full head before a couple of years back with Navan.”
That season, Nelson and Shaan Kingwell helped the Navan Grads secure a CCHL championship.
“Looking back to Junior A with Kingwell, it was a total complete buy-in from every single one of the guys,” he said. “Every day we showed up and did everything we needed to do to win the next game.”
“It took a team effort,” said Nelson. “With good teams, it’s sometimes a goalie that picks up a team at times, and others it’s a team that’s able to pick up a goalie when he needs an extra push in a long post-season.”
“Obviously, it was a different level, but even having that experience of winning, of knowing what it takes to win a championship, is great to bring to the room,” said Kingwell.
“We have a Memorial Cup winner in Nic Sima, Sam McCue won in Peterborough, I think we have a lot of sneaky experience on our team, too,” he added.
Among those with sneaky experience is Spitznagel, who won the USHL’s Clark Cup with the Muskegon Lumberjacks.
“You do the same stuff, but just harder,” he said. “In the playoffs, you need to elevate your game in every way, hitting harder and making harder plays, while sticking to your structure and your details.”
Two of the team’s veterans, Marrelli and overager Cooper Foster, are using this chance to finally get to go on a deep run.
“Having only made it as far as the second round and missing the playoffs last year, it’s a chip on the shoulder,” Marrelli said. “There have been great things Foster and I have learned from our last runs, so just using that and leaning on guys like Sima, who have won it all; we’re heading in the right direction.”
The opening game of the playoffs kicks off Friday at the Arena at TD Place at 7 p.m. Fans can secure tickets here.
