OHL History

It’s been a long time since I’ve used this site to post anything. While I have a couple of articles that I’m working on in the near future, I figured I’d kick things off with this extended thought that I’ve been having.

Recently, I was in London for a Knights game and got to finally check out the Don Brankley Hall of Fame. The Knights established the hall of fame back in 2018 as a way to honour their players and other people within the organization who had a notable impact with the club.

They aren’t the only team in the league to have a hall of fame to honour alumni. The Sarnia Sting launched theirs in 2023 to honour some of the notable players that have come through the Sting organization over the past 30 seasons in the Imperial City, which I have yet to visit but am looking forward to in the future.

This leads me to ask this question. Why aren’t more teams doing this?

I’ve been beating the drum on this idea for several years now and am surprised to see only a couple of teams actually establish one, especially with how many teams in the league have storied histories with plenty of worthy alumni to choose from. I’m not saying that Niagara or Flint should rush out and start one, but there are many other teams that have storied histories that could take on a project like this. 

When Windsor hits the half-century milestone next year, the OHL will have eight teams with 50+ years of history that have yet to establish one (Oshawa, Peterborough, Kitchener, London, Ottawa, Soo, Sudbury, Kingston and Windsor).

If you go the Sarnia route and start a hall of fame around the 30 year milestone, then in two years you will be able to add another four to that list (Owen Sound, Guelph, Barrie and Erie).

Some teams already have hall of fame areas set up in their buildings, with many cities using the arena space for city hall of fames, such as Peterborough, Oshawa and Guelph for example. However in most cases, those inductees weren’t members of those teams, or are reserved for people from the city itself. 

One of the few teams that has honoured many of its former players in a similar manner without a hall of fame are the Kitchener Rangers. While they have a Hall of History with artifacts, as well as the names of various great players from the past throughout the concourse, they don’t have an official hall of fame set up.

With the lengthy histories of some of these teams it might be a better idea to have a hall of fame in place rather than raise a banner for every star that has come through. While many teams have between four and six retired, some teams are above that such as Windsor with seven (10 if you include numbers retired to honour multiple players) and London with nine (who could easily add to that if they choose to honour anybody from the 2010’s era championship teams). Retired numbers are a good way to honour the legends of your team, so the last thing you want to do is risk watering it down.

The other issue with banners is some teams use them to honour numbers, while other teams use it to officially retire numbers. With a dedicated hall of fame, it becomes easier to separate the distinctions since players would just be honoured into that rather than one of those categories depending on the team (or in the case of Owen Sound and Windsor, they do both).

Starting a team hall of fame is also a good way for extra marketing for at least one home game per year as well, or more if they spread the dates of that seasons inductees out. It’s something that might get some more casual fans into the building that you might not necessarily attracted otherwise, as well as gives the die-hard fans of that team a date to look forward to as well.

One other thing that I’d like to add is that it also spreads awareness of the accomplishments of various players that you might not get from a banner, photo or a name in the concourse. Having a plaque that goes into detail about the inductee and what they meant to that club is a good way for fans that witnessed them during their time in the OHL to connect with the history of the team, and is a good way to get some younger fans interested in that team’s history as well.

When it comes to adding something like a hall of fame for most teams, I feel like the best time to consider this is now. For some of the older teams, you want to start this while your earlier alumni members are still with us. In the case of a few teams, it might be worth looking to add space for one into their new arena’s when they’re being built. In more instances, add one while the next set of renovations are being worked on. Establishing something like this that can be shared by both alumni and fans is something that has been neglected for a long time, and is a simple fix that would be worth it in the long run.