SAULT STE. MARIE - Ontario Hockey League commissioner Bryan Crawford recently made his first official trip to Sault Ste. Marie in his new role, but it’s not the first time he’s been to the city in a sporting capacity.
Crawford, who took over for David Branch last summer, was part of the committee that toured the Sault when Algoma University made its pitch to join Ontario University Athletics in 2012.
He was back in the Sault recently as part of his new gig as the man in charge at the OHL office.
“I’ve been in the arena before and touring everything, so it was great to come back,” Crawford said. “It’s such a fantastic community when it comes to supporting (the OHL) and the (Greyhounds).”
The visit, which saw him take in the Greyhounds game Friday night against the Niagara IceDogs in addition to spending some time around the GFL Memorial Gardens ahead of the game, was part of an ongoing tour of the league that will eventually take him through each of the OHL’s 20 cities.
Crawford had some high praise for the Greyhounds as well during his time in the Sault.
“It’s one of our heritage brands,” Crawford said of the Greyhounds. “The players that have come through this team are incredible.”
Crawford added that the “consistency” of the team with regards to being competitive and advancing players to professional hockey and university hockey has helped make it “a model franchise.”
“There’s lots of things that we want to apply across the league that they do really well here,” added Crawford, who has spent time during the first half of the regular season touring from city to city around the league.
He said part of his travel has been to help get a sense of “the really best practices that we need to be sharing, the things that we need to focus on as a league and as individual teams to work on, grow, and build to grow our businesses, to grow our hockey.
“If we do a better job on the business side, we can do an even better job on the hockey side,” Crawford added.
Crawford said one of the things he’s noticed during his tour has been teams adjusting the way they present the OHL experience to fans in an attempt to make it the best possible experience within the buildings.
“For the most part, the buildings are the buildings,” Crawford said. “The needs and interests of the fans grow and change. There’s been a number of examples of teams that have done really interesting things to adjust the buildings to address the need for hospitality spaces and mass-gathering spaces. They’re different things that people are interested in now that they maybe weren’t interested in 20 years ago.”
With the Greyhounds having placed bids to host the Memorial Cup the last two times it was the OHL’s turn to host the event, Crawford said that “it seems we’ll have a lot of interest” when the event returns to Ontario in 2027.
Asked what the Greyhounds would need to do to have the best opportunity to host it, should the team be interested, Crawford spoke of the need for teams to figure out “how to make sure that that event is a huge driver for the community, not just a set of hockey games over the course of a week.”
“I don’t think anyone doubts the enthusiasm for an event like that coming here and fans coming out to support it,” Crawford added.
“It’s really about how do we take this from just being about hockey to making sure that it’s truly about community-building and having more meaningful long-term impact.”
On potential expansion, Crawford said the OHL is in a bit of a unique position because of the recent NCAA decision to allow CHL players to play in their leagues after having played in Canada.
Crawford added that expansion is something the league is “actively exploring” as part of growing the business side of the league.
Though Crawford said he’s tended to look at it as a longer-term opportunity because of the logistics that would go into it, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that expansion happens sooner rather than later.
"We have to spend time and energy understanding the business and how to grow. The reality is that if we can do that really well, we can invest more in growing hockey as a whole."
"Those are things, including expansion, actively exploring, pursuing, and understanding."
Crawford added that "there are potential opportunities on the short term."
Asked about expansion into Toronto, Crawford said the exploration into the market was more of looking at the GTA as opposed to specifically in the City of Toronto.
“I think there’s a lot of opportunity in the Greater Toronto Area,” Crawford said.
“We excel in those markets that have their own identity. They’re a little bit smaller where we’re kind of the primary source of entertainment, the primary source of community-building,” Crawford said.
“(The GTA) is too big of a marketplace, there’s too many hockey fans, for us not to have exposure to all of those fans.”
On the NCAA rule change earlier this season allowing CHL players to join American universities, Crawford called it “a great opportunity.”
“Now, one of the barriers has been removed,” Crawford added.
“To be able to look at NCAA opportunities after playing in our league is great for our players and great for the development of hockey to have that sort of runway for players to develop.”
Crawford added that any sort of movement into GTA markets would be further down the line due to facility needs and other logistics that would be required to get a team in those markets.
“There’s a lot of mechanics to it that are still being sorted out and understood.
“It will probably take some time to really settle in and understand how it will fit together,” Crawford said.
The OHL commissioner also said the CHL’s scholarship packages remain unchanged if a player decides to go to NCAA hockey. The package will still be in effect if a player goes that route.
“From our perspective, those players that earn their scholarship packages, they can use it anywhere they want,” Crawford said.
“There are NCAA rules that will have to be addressed about what they allow our players to come with and there’s some ambiguity with that and understanding exactly what they’re going to be allowed to be utilized,” Crawford added, saying that the league plans to “fulfill our end of the agreement” when it comes to scholarship packages.
Coming to the OHL with a background that included positions with Ontario University Athletics and Golf Canada among others, Crawford said he’s been able to pull from those experiences during his short time with the OHL
“All of the things that come with running this league, we did at (the OUA), just on different scales,” Crawford said. “That’s been a huge background foundation for me.”
Although his executive background might not have been hockey-specific, Crawford said the sport is “still fundamental to my life and growing up.
“I grew up a AAA hockey player, I build a 100-by-70-foot outdoor rink in my backyard, I ran a PGA Tour event that turned a golf hole into a hockey rink, so it is ultimately still fundamental to my life and growing up,” Crawford said.