Wolves find balance in Lalonde: GM

While they may have officially made the pick on Saturday morning, the Sudbury Wolves knew all along that Owen Lalonde was their guy.

It was announced on Friday that Guelph, who held the first overall pick in the 2016 OHL Priority Selection Draft, would select Ryan Merkley from Mississauga.

But the Wolves had already made up their mind long before that who they would take with the second overall pick.

“We’ve had our mind made up for a few days,” said Wolves general manager Barclay Branch. “Like everything else, not just with our first pick, but with all of our picks, we try to, as a staff, put together several different types of scenarios that we could face and prepare for what we would do in each of those scenarios, and that applies to the situation with Owen (Lalonde). We’ve known for quite some time that Owen was our guy.”

Lalonde is a defenceman from Windsor who played for the Windsor Jr. Spitfires Minor Midget AAA team last season, tallying over a point a game with 13 goals and 24 assist in 33 games.

He has been described as an offensive d-man who is very skilled with the puck and who can jump up in the rush at any time.

But with the amount of goals Sudbury gave up last year (328 goals against, 31 more than the second worst team) they needed someone who could also play defence, and that’s just what Branch thinks Lalonde can do as well as he can put up the points.

“We were very high on Owen. In our estimation, he was one of the top, if not the top, defencemen in this draft class. He just plays the game the right way. He’s a very cerebral type player with high hockey intellect.

"He can play in any situation. When we see him as a player moving forward, he’s going to log big minutes for us. Any time you have the opportunity to fill a spot on your back end with that type of player, it’s kind of a no-brainer.

“Obviously, we had a lot of elements that we were looking for with our first pick, and in particular defencemen, and he checked off every box for us.

“The thing about Owen is he’s got that component in his game where he can jump up in the rush and carry the puck. He’s got a capability moving forward of being a power-play quarterback type. But the thing with him is, he’s well balanced in that he’s as good on the defence side of the puck as he is on the offence side of the puck.”

Branch said it was easy to spot during pre-draft interviews.

“With most of the players from the league that he played in, when we interviewed them leading into the draft, almost unanimously among most, if not all of them, he was the answer to our question, who was the toughest player you played against this year,” said Branch.

The Wolves traded their second overall pick in a deal with Flint, so they didn’t pick in the second round until the 14th pick, a pick they acquired from Windsor.

They liked the name Owen so much they took another one in centre Owen Gilhula from Gadshill, Ont., near Stratford.

Playing for the Huron Perth Lakers Minor Midget AAA team this season, he scored 21 goals and notched 13 assists for 34 points in 26 games.

He missed a good chunk of the year due to a collarbone injury, which, according to Branch, is why he fell so far down.

“Just like the way he plays the game, he’s a tenacious player with a high skill level and he’s got a knack to score. The thing we found in the past with guys like Owen, if they score in bantam and minor midget, they’re going find a way to score at the next level, as well.

"Having said that, he was a guy that we had much higher, but because he was injured, it allowed for him to kind of fall to our pick. We just felt like it was too good of an opportunity to pass up on him.”

Gilhula’s stats from the year before were off the charts: 47 goals and 51 assists for 98 points in 64 games in bantam hockey.

The Wolves did not have a third-round pick, but had two fourth-round picks.

Sixty-third overall, the Pack picked winger Dawson Baker from Baltimore, Ont.

With the Quinte Red Devils Minor Midget AAA squad, Baker had 37 points in 34 games.

With the 80th pick, Sudbury took Nolan Hutcheson from Kingston Frontenacs Minor Midget AAA.

Hutchison put up some big numbers this year: 25 goals and 44 points in 34 games.

In the fifth round and 83rd overall, Sudbury picked Owen Lalonde’s teammate, forward Blake McConville.

Then a familiar name for hockey fans was snatched up by Sudbury.

Adam Samuelsson was taken 95th overall from the North Jersey Avalanche U16 squad.
The defenceman is the son of former NHLer Ulf Samuelsson.

Ulf played 17 seasons in the NHL and he passed along some of his size to his son, and then some.

Adam is 6-foot-4 and weighs in at 209 pounds. However, he has commitments to US development teams and a verbal commitment to Boston College.

Branch said it was still too good of an opportunity to pass up.

“We think it’s a substantial value pick. We understand he has some commitments with the US program, but we didn’t let that get in the way of taking him, because he was the best prospect on the board for us at that point. Whether he commits to us immediately, or we get a commitment from him a year or two years from now, we’re going to work towards that and best case scenario, he’s in our lineup sooner rather than later.”

Branch had quite the smile on his face for most of the interview and perhaps it was because up to that point everything was going better than planned, players were falling further than they thought, right into the paws of the Wolves.

“I’ve got to be honest, all of them we were surprised, and that’s just the nature of the draft. We’ve come to expect that, for whatever reason, cracks develop and guys fall through.”