SPOTLIGHT: Mitchell Martin
“I am going to contribute in every way possible and play hard in all three zones. I want to push myself to score goals, make big hits, and be a leader for us.”
Growing up in Northern Ontario in Sudbury, or what is often referred to as “The Great White North”, Junior forward Mitchell Martin was accustomed to snowy winters, subzero temperatures, frozen bodies of water, and hockey.
To Martin, Sudbury encapsulated the sport of hockey, heritage, and friendship. As his family lived on a lake, Martin first slid on a pair of skates at an outdoor rink where he learned the technicalities of the sport, before taking his minor hockey league by storm.
“I started when I was five. We used to live on a lake and my dad would make a rink and he taught me all the essentials, how to pass and skate. I really liked it and had a drive to keep going.”
Despite the cold weather, Martin’s love for the game overruled any decision to stay inside during the winter months’ most intolerable days. Having spent his entire minor hockey career playing in Sudbury, the platform allowed him to work through “massive growth spurts” and develop as a lengthy body on the ice, standing now at a stature of six-foot-four.
Martin cherished his time surrounded by teammates that he now considers to be lifelong friends, to which he connects this experience to valuable lessons about a strong work ethic, motivational drive, and camaraderie within a team.
“It took me a while to figure out how to properly utilize my size. There were a few awkward years where I couldn’t skate very well because I was figuring it all out. But, my experience prepared me for what happens in this league. It’s a lot quicker, you have to adjust, and have to eliminate those bad habits. Playing in Sudbury all the way up was good to build that sense of camaraderie.”
These were all attributes that Martin engraved in his daily life both on and off the ice and something that was of value to the Kitchener Rangers in the 2019 OHL Priority Selection. Playing for the Sudbury Wolves at the AAA level, he netted 33 points in 22 games before being taken 81st overall by the Blueshirts. For the first time, Martin was set to be wearing new threads, in a new city.
His journey to the OHL began at the Junior A level for the Rayside-Balfour Canadians where he was reunited with familiar faces across the locker room. Even better, Martin was put into a prominent position to produce, tallying 62 goals in 52 games played in the 2019-20 season. After a COVID-19-shortened year, to which he scored eight points in 10 games, Martin was Kitchener bound to partake in the 2021-22 season.
“Playing for the Canadians was so much fun. Everybody on the team was from Sudbury, I just knew everyone and the roster was great up and down the lineup.”
Now in his third season as a Ranger, Martin is self-motivated to produce as a second-line left winger, already amounting to four points through six games played. In a more scalable role on a younger roster, Martin feels as though his importance is evolving with the organization. He has been working alongside his trainer, Brock McGillis, to seek mentorship and improve on specifications within his game to produce the best version of himself on a nightly basis.
More specifically, Martin has contributed numerous hours to skating, strength, and conditioning drills that will cater to his “Chris Kreider” type of approach which is dependent on playing “more up and down with little quick bursts taking pucks to the net”.
“My trainer Brock McGillis is my trainer but he’s more of a mentor to me. We go over video and he trains me on and off the ice. We are still working on skating and strength because you can never be too good of a skater and I want to continue to get stronger.”
With success on the horizon, Martin and the Blueshirts are “looking for consistency going forward” and focusing on not “letting the highs get too high and the lows get too low”.
In two solid seasons with the Rangers thus far, Martin tips his hat to Rangers nation, the staff, and the organization as a whole for their efforts to keep the team “dialled in” throughout a 68-game season claiming the Aud to be an “out of body experience”.
“The organization treats us great. Everyone knows we get top-notch treatment here. To the fans, playing here 34 times a year is unreal, it’s indescribable, we embrace it so let’s keep winning.”
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Written by Evan Doerfler
