Battalion to get selective
KINGSTON, Ont. — The Ontario Hockey League Priority Selection returns to a live, in-arena format at 7 p.m. Friday when the first round gets under way at Slush Puppie Place, home of the Kingston Frontenacs.
It’s been 26 years since the last such event, hosted in 2000 by what then were the Mississauga IceDogs. Since 2001, the process has been conducted via the Internet.
This year also marks a return to June, after years in which the Priority Selection was held in May and, more recently, April. The first round is Friday night, with the rest of the 15-round process, primarily for eligible U16 players in Ontario and parts of the U.S. but including those up to 2007 birth years, to be conducted starting at 9 a.m. Saturday.
The OHL website and league social media channels will provide coverage throughout the weekend.
The North Bay Battalion has the 11th selection in the first round after taking centre Cam Warren of the Toronto Jr. Canadiens U16s at No. 6 last year.
Teams pick in inverse order of the previous season’s merged final standings, with the non-playoff clubs exercising the first four picks in accordance with the results of a weighted lottery, which was won this year by the Oshawa Generals.
“You’ve always got to look for that best player available, in my opinion, especially in the early rounds, because it’s talent that you potentially won’t get later on,” Adam Dennis, the Battalion’s director of hockey operations, said this week.
“But, in saying that, for me very important is the runway for some of these players, especially with the new landscape. Right now we’re still kind of adjusting to the new changes, so it makes for a bottleneck, and the players that we draft, say the majority of them, will not see games next season, but it’s important to try to map out some needs in the future that we may have and some holes that may open up a year out from now.
“So just trying to balance all those things, but you can’t pass up on talent.”
The “new landscape” followed the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division I council voting Nov. 7, 2024, to make Canadian Hockey League players eligible for competition starting in 2025-26.
“Last year we did not draft an American,” noted Dennis. “It was not necessarily by design, but we felt very strongly of our Ontario list, and we thought that we benefited from it. We got guys like (centre) Jax Pereira, (goaltender) Cole Vreugdenhil, (left winger) Lincoln Edwards, who were guys that we had rated in the top two, three rounds, and we were able to grab them in the fourth and fifth.”
After trades, North Bay has 17 picks, with single selections in the first and second rounds, two in the third and none in the fourth. The Battalion has one pick in each of the last 11 rounds, except for the sixth and 12th, in each of which it holds two.
In the second round, the Troops will exercise what originally was the Flint Firebirds’ selection, acquired June 2 from the Saginaw Spirit in a swap of picks. North Bay’s own second-rounder went to the Niagara IceDogs in a Dec. 12, 2022, trade for centre Pasquale Zito.
The Guelph Storm’s third-rounder was acquired from Niagara on June 13, 2025, in a trade that saw left winger Reyth Smith join the IceDogs, while the Kitchener Rangers’ third-round choice was received five days later from the Owen Sound Attack for right winger Jacob Therrien.
The Troops’ own third- and fourth-round picks were dealt to Niagara in acquiring defenceman Bronson Ride on Jan. 7, 2024.
The Windsor Spitfires’ sixth-round selection was obtained Aug. 8, 2024, when rearguard Tnias Mathurin went to Windsor, and the Battalion got Saginaw’s 12th-rounder when it dealt defenceman Zach Wilson to the Spirit on Oct. 6 last year.
