Decade in Review: 2012-13
The London Knights repeated as OHL champions boasting several holdovers from their 2011-12 championship team including leading scorer Max Domi, sharpshooter Seth Griffith and hard-working two-way centremen Bo Horvat and Chris Tierney.
After taking care of the Plymouth Whalers in five games to win the Wayne Gretzky Trophy as Western Conference champions, the Knights met a talented Barrie Colts team in the OHL Championship Series, one that featured current-day NHL stars in Mark Scheifele, Aaron Ekblad and former Knight Andreas Athanasiou. Down 3-1, the Knights rallied to win Game 5 on home ice before Ryan Rupert scored 1:30 into overtime of Game 6 on the road to send the series back to London for a deciding Game 7. Things went right down to the wire, with Horvat scoring the deciding goal with less than a second remaining on the third period clock to blow the lid off a sold out building in London as the Knights won 3-2.
London would place third at the 2013 Memorial Cup in Saskatoon, Sask., an event won by stars Nathan MacKinnon, Jonathan Drouin and the Halifax Mooseheads.
The 2012-13 Knights fell one win shy of tying an OHL record, winning 24 consecutive contests from November 2 to December 31, 2012. The loss came at the hands of the Sarnia Sting on New Years Day as Nikolay Goldobin scored in OT to give the Sting a 6-5 victory.
The 2012-13 season saw Plymouth’s Vincent Trocheck earn the Red Tilson Trophy after leading the league with 109 points (50-59–109). Sarnia’s Charles Sarault (22-86–108) and Sault Ste. Marie’s Nick Cousins (27-76–103) also finished above the 100-point mark.
A pair of current-day NHL goaltenders duelled it out down the stretch, with Malcolm Subban (Belleville Bulls) leading the league in goals-against average (2.14) while Jordan Binnington (Owen Sound Attack) earned OHL Goaltender of the Year honours. Sarnia Sting goaltender JP Anderson finished his five-year OHL career with a league record 126 career wins, a mark that still stands today.
A rookie on the rise, up-and-coming star Connor McDavid, an exceptional status first overall pick in the 2012 OHL Priority Selection, earned OHL Rookie of the Year honours with 66 points (25-41–66) as a 15-year-old.
The OHL’s graduating class of 2012-13 included several prominent names in Trocheck (Plymouth Whalers/Florida Panthers), Cousins (Soo Greyhounds/Montreal Canadiens), John Gibson (Kitchener Rangers/Anaheim Ducks), Ryan Strome (Niagara IceDogs/New York Rangers), Boone Jenner (Oshawa Generals/Columbus Blue Jackets), Mark Scheifele (Barrie Colts/Winnipeg Jets), Sean Monahan (Ottawa 67’s/Calgary Flames) and Tom Wilson (Plymouth Whalers/Washington Capitals) among others.
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