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Top OJHL players past and present playing on Collingwood ice this weekend

OJHL players past and present were in Collingwood for the first day of a two-day event on Fri. Jan. 13, 2022 (Steve Mansbridge/CTV News Barrie) OJHL players past and present were in Collingwood for the first day of a two-day event on Fri. Jan. 13, 2022 (Steve Mansbridge/CTV News Barrie)
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Some of the best players in the OJHL, past and present, are hitting the ice in Collingwood for a weekend celebration of Canada's game.

The OJHL All-Star Celebration is taking over the Eddie Bush Arena, featuring some of the best players in the league. The festivities kicked off on Friday with the OJHL Alumni Game, where about 300 fans packed the stands to see the top players in the league's history take on the best players in Collingwood's history.

"The whole thing is about celebrating the fans and the players," Marty Savoi, the OJHL Commissioner, tells CTV News. "We have a number of players that are in the league right now; there's four of them in the game tonight that are going to be on the NHL watch list that was just out today."

The OJHL Alumni took Friday's game against Collingwood's Alumni 5-2.

Savoi says the two-day event has been two and a half years in the making as it faced cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the alumni game, Friday also featured a skills competition with the current 40 best players in the league.

Saturday's highlight is expected to be the OJHL All-Star game at 3 p.m., which will be followed by the top prospects in the league hitting the ice at 7:30 p.m.

The commissioner says the Collingwood community is the perfect host for the event.

"[Quickly] they've become the top-selling team in the league. They lead the league in attendance; Dave Steele and the community here have done an unbelievable job," Savoi says. "We've come back to the community. We were here before; we left, and we've come back. It was a good choice, and you can tell just by the support that we get. You go anywhere in the community, and everybody's talking about the team."

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