Two years ago, when the Guelph Storm selected defenceman Ryan Merkley first overall in the 2016 OHL draft, there was no debate.
That year, in 33 games as the Toronto Jr. Canadiens’ captain at the minor midget Triple-A level, Merkley led his team in scoring on route to becoming the GTHL Player of the Year. Despite his position, his 1.33 points per game put him third in the league in scoring, behind only Don Mills Flyers centre Jack McBain (taken 20th overall) and teammate Kirill Nizhnikov (seventh overall). In two OHL Cups (the end-of-year minor midget championship in the province that he played in the year before while playing above his age group), Merkley posted nine points in 11 games.
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“He was head and shoulders above everybody else at that level. His skill level, his skating, his puck control and his vision as a defenceman, you’re not blessed to coach too many of those types of players,” Dave D’Ammizio, his coach that season with the Jr. Canadiens, told The Athletic earlier this week.
“I’ve been coaching at the Triple-A level for 20 years and there’s been very few players at that level with that skill-set; kids like Alex Pietrangelo, Roland McKeown and Victor Mete have those similarities but I think he might be even a little bit more than some of those players.”
Five years before that 15-year-old season, D’Ammizio coached the Toronto Bulldogs, an area all-star team of sorts that annually sent a team to the Brick Tournament, a yearly showcase for the country’s top 10-year-old hockey players. The story was the same then as it was in 2015-16.
“He’s been a talent from a very young age, let’s just say that,” D’Ammizio added.
Now in his second season in the OHL, Merkley’s elite offensive ability has propelled him to second in the league among defencemen in scoring with 52 points in 44 games, two shy of London Knights star Evan Bouchard, who has played one more game. This summer, at the Ivan Hlinka Memorial Tournament, Merkley led Canada’s defencemen with six points in five games. Last season, he was named the OHL’s Rookie of the Year and led the league’s first-year players in scoring with 55 points, outscoring the nearest under-17 rookie (fellow 2018 NHL draft prospect Akil Thomas) by seven points.
But standing inside Guelph’s Sleeman Centre at the midway point of his draft year and ahead of the biggest showcase game of his season, the Sherwin-Williams CHL/NHL Top Prospects Game, Merkley has evolved from the no-brainer first-overall choice in the OHL draft to the most polarizing prospect in the 2018 NHL draft class.
It’s Wednesday evening, and on Monday NHL Central Scouting’s midterm ranking had Merkley at 21st overall among North American players, behind seven other OHL prospects. At the end of October, my first 2018 ranking had Merkley at No. 5. A month before that, colleague Corey Pronman had him slotted at No. 3.
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While most players shy away from talking about whether they follow their draft ranking, Merkley owns his volatility.
“It’s hard not to (pay attention to the rankings) because they’re everywhere, everywhere you go: Twitter, TSN. You just can’t focus on it. I’m up and down, wherever you go, I could be anywhere!” Merkley said, laughing. “It’s kind of funny to look at. Everyone’s got their slot and their area and then I’m just all over the place, right?”
There’s a belief, in the scouting community and beyond, that Merkley cheats for his offence and costs his team defensively as a result. At 5-foot-11 and 163 pounds, he’s also on the thinner side, the lightest defenceman at the Top Prospects Game by seven pounds — and its fourth lightest player overall.
This season, despite leading the mediocre Storm in scoring, Merkley is last on the team in plus-minus, with a rating of minus-20.
Merkley and his former coach still keep in constant communication and on Thursday, when Merkley takes to his home ice as an alternate captain with Team Cherry, D’Ammizio will be in the stands, watching over him in awe as he always has. D’Ammizio, who has helped develop a plethora of NHL players, refutes that Merkley’s defensive lapses, driven by the risks he takes as a creator, are going to prevent him from becoming an NHL player.
“The bigger the game, the better he played. He’s fully capable of playing defence. He is a high-risk defenceman, he takes chances, he relies on his skating to recover, I think just at the next levels when players are that much better he’ll just have to adapt a little bit better as to when he’s taking those chances and relying a little bit less on the skating and being a little bit smarter out there. I’m sure he’ll find a way to be able to adapt to being a better defender at the next level but he’ll continue to contribute offensively and that’s a big part of his game,” he said.
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Nizhnikov, his former minor midget teammate, is now his opponent on their biggest shared stage. He knows better than most, after years spent playing with or against him, how good Merkley is.
“He can hold the puck as long as he wants to,” Nizhnikov said, laughing after his on-ice testing. “Great vision, great playmaking abilities, he’s just a really, really skilled player.”
Because Guelph is hosting the event, head coach George Burnett and his Storm staff are helping out on the ice and behind the bench with Team Orr. Over the course of 21 seasons as a coach for more than half a dozen OHL teams, with experience in the NHL with the Mighty Ducks and Oilers, Burnett has seen it all. Like D’Ammizio, he recognizes Merkley’s unique ability.
“He has just a magnificent skill set, very special skating, vision, anticipation, ability to create offence. I told him not to dip his toe in the water but to get after it hard and show the great skill set (at the top prospects game),” said Burnett, who is looking forward to coaching against him on Thursday night.
“The simplest way that I can tell you is that the concerns that are expressed about his game, he’s making progress. He’s working hard to be a more complete player, more well-rounded, taking pride in habits and the way he eats and trains. We forget sometimes that these kids are 17 but I’m much more comfortable with him being involved in all situations. He has the odd setback and falls into maybe some old habits but he’s clearly making progress in a lot of areas that have been questioned and I think certainly the package that you see from a skating and all those different attributes are elite.”
Merkley has come a long way since the beginning of the season, Burnett’s first with him after coaching the Flint Firebirds last season.
“In the early part of the year from an emotional standpoint, and decision making, and shift length and all those types of things, those have all improved significantly. He’s meeting with a lot of NHL teams and I’m sure they’re all challenging him in a lot of different ways. It’s all an experience and a process of him understanding what’s required,” Burnett said.
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“We can talk about those things as best we can as coaches and the people who are with him on a daily basis but when it’s reinforced by people that are making those decisions at the next level that will be responsible for how he spends his next 15 years, I’m sure it goes a long way to helping the message. It’s a process for every young man. Everyone brings something different to the table, everybody starts at a different spot and I think he’s miles ahead of most everybody else in a lot of areas and working extremely hard on improving in those areas that need work.”
Merkley and teammate Cam Hillis chose to stay at the host hotel to reconnect with old friends.
“He’s a very creative player. He has very good hockey sense and him and I are similar-type players so we feed off each other and create offence,” Hillis said of his Storm teammate.
Merkley is looking forward to the chance to grab back his limelight and change some minds — and he really wants to beat Burnett and assistant coaches Luca Caputi and Jake Grimes in front of his home crowd.
“I want to show I belong here, show I can play defence against the top guys — Svechnikov, McLeod, there’s a lot of top picks here, a lot of talent, a lot of speed,” he said. “My main focus is on the D-zone, just working on the defensive zone coverage, bearing down and competing harder. I’m getting better in that aspect of the game. You have to find your spot (to attack), you have to even it out, it’s all about learning. You just have to have a good game (at an event like this), right? You have to be better than the rest. It’s going to be a fast game, a lot of players trying to prove themselves with a lot of scouts and GMs in the crowd.”
And there’s not a player those scouts and GMs will be more likely to pay close attention to than No. 6 in red for Team Cherry.
(Top photo: Terry Wilson/CHL Images)
