One person who’d love to see the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) set up a team in Chatham-Kent (CK) is one of the top players from the area.
Wallaceburg’s Seth Griffith currently serves as captain of the Bakersfield Condors in the American Hockey League (AHL). Before launching his professional career, Griffith spent four seasons with the London Knights, playing a key role in their back-to-back OHL championship wins.
Griffith was recently featured on the Chatham-Kent Beyond the Headlines podcast, where he discussed his views on the OHL’s potential expansion into CK.
Earlier this year, OHL Commissioner Bryan Crawford met with various municipal officials to outline details about the league’s current status and plans for possible expansion. According to CK Mayor Darrin Canniff, both parties agreed that Chatham-Kent is an ideal spot for a new team.
For Griffith, it makes perfect sense for the OHL to grow into this area.
“There are so many hockey enthusiasts locally. I think it’s about time [and] hopefully it comes to Chatham,” he explained.
The primary reason why Chatham-Kent hasn’t had its own team is due to a lack of an adequate arena. The largest venue in Chatham, the Memorial Arena, holds around 2,500 fans. This would make it the smallest arena in the OHL; Brantford has one that’s slightly larger but plans are underway there for a new facility that can seat over 5,000 people.
A major concern is whether Chatham-Kent could regularly fill such an arena and if making that kind of financial investment would pay off. Griffith believes that they definitely can.
“If you look at a similar city like Sarnia, they seem, when they have good teams, to hold their own pretty well,” he added.
Bringing another team into southwestern Ontario might also encourage more local talent to consider playing in the OHL instead of other leagues. Options like the United States Hockey League (USHL) and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) are becoming increasingly appealing for players.
Griffith mentioned how much playing in London meant to him since it was close to home.
“My family got to come to a lot of games. My parents, aunt, and uncle would always come with my grandma, and my wife now she’d make it out a decent amount,” he added.
If staying nearby matters to most players, having a team in southwest Ontario would be crucial. A report by Numberbarn shows that southwestern Ontario has produced the second-highest number of NHL players ever-only behind Toronto.
However, not everyone in Chatham-Kent supports adding an OHL team. Some municipal councillors expressed frustration after discovering they weren’t invited to meet with the OHL Commissioner. Their main worry centers around funding for a new arena; initial estimates suggest it could cost around $200 million.
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