{"id":38839,"date":"2026-09-03T12:23:55","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T16:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=38839"},"modified":"2026-09-03T12:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T16:24:10","slug":"aurora-sports-hall-of-famer-mike-kitchen-drops-ceremonial-puck-at-historic-wolves-colts-ohl-game-at-zancor-centre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-sports-hall-of-famer-mike-kitchen-drops-ceremonial-puck-at-historic-wolves-colts-ohl-game-at-zancor-centre\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Sports Hall of Famer Mike Kitchen drops ceremonial puck at historic Wolves-Colts OHL game at Zancor Centre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aurora Sports Hall of Famer Mike Kitchen made history when he dropped the ceremonial puck at Monday night\u2019s OHL preseason tilt between the Barrie Colts and Sudbury Wolves at the sold-out Zancor Centre in King City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two-time Stanley Cup-winning coach with the Chicago Blackhawks dropped the vulcanized rubber disc between Teague Vader of the Colts and Blake Clayton of the Wolves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clayton was voted First Star of the Game.  His two-goal and one-assist performance led the Wolves to a 4-2 win over the Colts in the first OHL Major Junior game played in King Township.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kitchen acknowledged both the historical significance of the sporting event and the quality of play on the ice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel quite honored to do the puck drop.  It was nice of [Mayor] Steve [Pellegrini] and [Councillor] Dave [Boyd] to invite me to take part. It\u2019s great to see the area growing so much to have OHL and OJHL hockey here. It\u2019s great for the town of King City to watch this brand of hockey. To watch these players\u2014they\u2019re such great skaters. Their balance is already there and there are no awkward skaters on either side. This is just a preseason game, but it was spirited and fast-paced.  It was a quick first period.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The veteran NHL defenseman\u2014who was also inducted into the King Township Sports Hall of Fame as part of its inaugural Class of 2026\u2014expressed his appreciation at being enshrined in February and reflected on his formative Junior hockey years in King, Aurora, and Toronto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a very nice induction ceremony in the Spring and it\u2019s a nice display here. Very honored to be in the first group of inductees. To be considered is very humbling. Very proud to be a part of it and of my hockey roots in King.  I grew up here with a group of friends who were good hockey players and we moved up the ranks together. Frank and Jack Foran were terrific players\u2014Frank could shoot equally hard from either side. My first Junior hockey team was with the Tigers in Aurora. It was not finesse hockey\u2014it was rugged.  But I got drafted by the Marlies and we won the Memorial Cup in 1975 so they\u2019re great memories for me as a Junior hockey player.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

King Councillor Boyd, Mayor Pellegrini, and Councillor Jordan Cescolini joined Kitchen at centre ice for the historical puck drop.  The entertaining contest, taken in by the biggest crowd to grace the Zancor Centre in its three-year history, was hosted by the Junior A Rebellion to promote the club\u2019s upcoming OJHL season. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boyd promoted the local club by sporting his Rebellion Junior A jersey\u2014numbered #24– and the local sports advocate noted between periods that \u201cIt was great to see so many fans here at the Zancor Centre and to be able to watch tonight\u2019s game with my family and good friends. My wife is here with my daughter Emma and son William who\u2019s on the ice picking up pucks between periods. It\u2019s a privilege to spend time with Mike Kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Pellegrini wore his classic blue-bodied and white-sleeved Junior A Rebellion jacket to promote the squad and Kitchen similarly encouraged fans from across the Township to support King\u2019s OJHL team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great hockey\u2014there have been players drafted into the NHL out of the league. It\u2019s a great family outing, too \u2013 the tickets are reasonably priced, and you don\u2019t have to travel too far from home. It\u2019s entertaining hockey and it\u2019s right in your own backyard.  I think it\u2019s really important to come out and support the local junior team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hundreds of fans who did come out and support the Junior A Rebellion by attending the Colts-Wolves OHL tilt were treated to an entertaining game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a hard-hitting affair as both clubs worked off the rust of the summer holidays.  It was Sudbury\u2019s first game of the preseason while the Colts were playing their third in four days after participating in an NCAA showcase in Barrie.  Ceremonial puck drop centre Blake Clayton looked to be in mid-season form for Sudbury when he snapped the puck top right shelf past Barrie goaltender Hagan Bach to make it 1-0 for the Wolves less than six minutes into the contest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between the first and second frame, the U8 Rebellion rep team treated the fans to a spirited split-squad game as King\u2019s rich hockey history was promoted by its youngest travel team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the OHL teams returned to the ice for the middle frame, the Wolves added to their one-goal lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second period goals by Brayden Bennett and Genc Ula built a 3-0 margin for Sudbury after 40 minutes of play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to the buzzer, tempers flared with 51 seconds left in the second frame as Colts forward Phillip Shargorodsky and Cole Wreggitt\u2019s kneeing and slashing penalties morphed into fighting majors.  A range of ensuing roughing skirmishes broke out between the ill-tempered teams with three seconds on the clock as Tate Collins of the Colts and Shayden Hinterberg and Finn Kearns of the Wolves found themselves in the sin bin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Colts whittled away the Wolves\u2019 three-goal lead when Sebastian Mogull got Barrie on the board at 3:46 of the third period.  Ethan Anusky cut Barrie\u2019s deficit to 3-2 when he beat Wolves goaltender Owen Leonard at 14:14. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Barrie\u2019s rally fell short when Clayton notched his second of the game into an empty net milliseconds before time expired to seal Sudbury\u2019s historic two-goal victory at the Zancor Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Jim Stewart
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora Sports Hall of Famer Mike Kitchen made history when he dropped the ceremonial puck at Monday night\u2019s OHL preseason tilt between the Barrie Colts and Sudbury Wolves at the sold-out Zancor Centre in King City. The two-time Stanley Cup-winning coach with the Chicago Blackhawks dropped the vulcanized rubber disc between Teague Vader of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":38840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-a6r","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-10 13:57:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/2026-09-03-03.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38841,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38839\/revisions\/38841"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}