For Michael Misa, OHL exceptional status and the 2025 NHL Draft are just the start

Chris Lazary still remembers what he was thinking during that first practice, as he stood against the wall watching Michael Misa navigate his way around the ice — and through and past his new teammates.

Thank God we have him and I get to be his coach for the next three years.

I know how much I’m going to learn from working with a player of this calibre.

He still remembers the thought he had from behind the bench as he watched Misa, the sixth-ever player to be granted exceptional to play in the OHL as a 15-year-old, score twice in his debut for the Saginaw Spirit, too.

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He’s going to change our franchise.

In between that first skate and that two-goal OHL debut, Spirit general manager Dave Drinkill sent a text to the team’s owners with a revelation, telling them Misa is one of those rare players where even when he has a quote-unquote bad game, you look down at the scoresheet and he still has an assist — or two.

“That’s just who he is as a player,” Drinkill said. “He has that innate ability to produce for his team. And that’s just because the puck follows him around and that hockey IQ is off the charts.”

That innate ability meant nobody was surprised when Misa put together the most productive exceptional status season in OHL history, producing 1.24 points per game (besting John Tavares’ 1.18, Shane Wright’s 1.14, and Connor McDavid’s 1.05) and tying for Saginaw’s lead in scoring with 56 points in 45 games despite missing six weeks with a fractured tibia.

Nobody was surprised because none of this is new for Misa. He has been on this path since he was a little kid.

Wasserman Hockey executive vice president Dave Gagner saw extreme intelligence, an advanced ability to quickly process the game, standout creativity, and a maturity to try unnecessary things the very first time he watched him play. The only thing the then-small Misa had to count on was that he would grow.

Long before the OHL Cup MVP, the exceptional status and the OHL Rookie of the Year award, a 10-year-old Misa was leading the famed Brick Invitational Tournament by five points, registering 23 points in just eight games to lead the Toronto Bulldogs to the title.

This summer, as a 16-year-old underager at the under-18 Hlinka Gretzky Cup, he helped lead Canada to gold with eight points in five games, rising from a depth role to the first line after a six-point game against Slovakia.

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Today, still two seasons out from his next draft day as he begins what would have been his rookie season in the OHL if not for exceptional status, he and American star James Hagens are the presumptive front-runners for the top of the 2025 NHL Draft.

Lazary has worked with a lot of talented players — names like Pavel Mintyukov, Cole Perfetti, Nick Suzuki, Owen Tippett, Ryan McLeod, Filip Hronek, Jakob Chychrun, Travis Konecny, Jordan Kyrou and Pavel Zacha — in nearly a decade as a coach in the OHL with the Spirit and the Sarnia Sting.

And he knew right away that Misa was different.

“Generally in our league, you can tell the guys that are almost like for sure going to be NHL players because they’re just that much different, they’re that much better amongst good players already. And he had that already as an underager, you could just tell like ‘This guy’s going to do something special here.’ You can see it, you can feel it,” Lazary said. “And he would hate me saying that. He would hate me talking about him in that light because that’s not Michael. He hates the accolades and the conversations about him. But you can tell he has that ‘it’ factor.”

Before coaching in the OHL, Lazary also spent half a decade in minor hockey with the Toronto Marlboros AAA program. So he knew, in the season before that first practice, as he watched “a bunch” of Misa in preparation for the 2022 OHL draft, “how hard it is for kids at that level to stand out” and how impressive it was that he did as an underager.

He didn’t know that Misa was going to be granted exceptional status during those trips up to Toronto to watch him with the Mississauga Senators. He didn’t even know whether the Spirit would hold the No. 1 pick. But he knew they were going to be a lottery team, and he knew that if they got the first pick, he wanted Misa.

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He also knew that of the three players who were rumoured to be applying for exceptional status that year — Misa, his teammate William Moore (who Lazary thought “easily” should have been granted status and has since joined USA Hockey’s national development program), and London Jr. Knights star Ryan Roobroeck (who’d later go No. 2 in the 2023 OHL draft) — he’d prefer Misa.

“We thought with Misa, ‘He’s just a gamer.’ My first impressions were, having watched Connor McDavid play a bit when he was younger, that he had some McDavid qualities to him in terms of thought process and playmaking. He’s a little bit of a different skater than Connor but there were a lot of similarities in terms of a guy who might get exceptional,” Lazary said. “And to me, the thing that stood out the most was his work ethic without the puck, how hard he tracked, and his competitiveness. Plus his skill was easy to figure out pretty quick. We knew if we could ever find a way, or be lucky enough to get this guy, like he is the real deal. He’s special, man.”

That belief, and Misa’s exceptional status, were then cemented at the 2022 OHL Cup when he broke McDavid’s tournament scoring record with 20 points in eight games to win MVP and lead the Senators to the title — all after they’d lost in the GTHL playoffs and had to win a play-in game just to get into the event.

Drinkill called Misa’s play at the OHL Cup “unbelievable to watch” and said it was “hard to believe that he was a year younger than everybody else.”

He’d first heard about Misa through Ken Hornick a few years prior. Hornick had worked for Drinkill as one of his scouts when he was an assistant general manager with the Barrie Colts, and he’d told him Misa would be the next up-and-comer.

Usually, years after being told about the so-called next ones, Drinkill stumbles back upon them in their OHL draft year and says something like “Oh, I remember that name, he’s just OK now, he’ll be a mid-round pick.”

When he got his eyes on Misa, it was another story altogether.

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“His skating, his explosiveness, his ability to shake a defender and create room for himself all leap off the page, but that’s all a part of his hockey IQ. He’s so smart, he sees what he’s doing one step ahead,” Drinkill said. “You can tell his hockey IQ is so good because he makes everybody he plays with better. It doesn’t matter who you put on his line. And that started back in minor hockey.”

Once they got the No. 1 pick, Drinkill immediately set up a meeting with Hornick and the Misa family to make sure they were OK with coming to Saginaw.

He left that meeting not only more impressed by the player, but by his family, too.

“I’d heard such good things about the family and the person himself but until you actually meet him and get to know him and his family a little bit and how he was raised, he’s so humble, he’s such a pleasant young man to be around, and he’s such a likeable kid,” Drinkill said. “He’s just such a good human being. It’s really, truly a special thing.”

Lazary calls Misa’s parents, Frank and Sandra, “the most easygoing hockey parents we’ve ever dealt with.”

“His support group, his family, I think that’s one big reason why he’s been so successful is the people in his corner,” Lazary said. “For a kid that’s that good, his dad will call Drinks and he’ll be like ‘Hey, sorry I’m bothering you’ and he’s like ‘You’re not bothering me, what do you need?’ and he’ll be like ‘Can we get an extra ticket to the game?’ and he’s so sheepish, like he doesn’t want to call the GM because they’re just that type of people.”

Once they got Misa into camp — after their marketing staff had built “a lot of hype on him” — they realized what they’d seen in that meeting was real.

“There’s obviously an aura about him. He’s good and he knows he’s good but he has that humility about him that I think is really special,” Drinkill said. “I really appreciate that. He’s a very, very low-maintenance person off of the ice and he could be the opposite because of his ability.”

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Added Lazary: “I’ve been doing it a long time, and he’s one of those guys that’s refreshing and reminds you why you like to coach because not every guy is high maintenance or takes a lot of work. He’s just easygoing, he wants to get better, and he’s just a good person.”

Drinkill and Lazary were both also caught off guard by that competitiveness they’d identified in minor hockey.

“I knew he was a competitor but puck battles for a 15-year-old coming into our league, the ability to hold onto the puck, and shield and take contact to make plays, I didn’t think he’d have that in him at a young age but he does,” Drinkill said.

Lazary actually calls Misa’s competitiveness his No. 1 trait.

“Day in, day out, in the gym, on the ice, he’s a competitive kid. He wants to be the best amongst his group,” Lazary said. “And then it’s his skating, his playmaking, his vision, his ability to make plays under pressure or with heavy pressure. To me, if you watch a guy’s puck touches under pressure and how many successful plays come from them, I think that’s one of the special analytics. I think a lot of guys make a lot of plays when they’re under limited to no pressure but when you’re under heavy pressure, what’s the result of your puck touch? His is generally always very good.”

They also came to realize that Misa was as quick a study as he was a player.

“Sometimes you get these players that are just so good but they’re not necessarily ‘oh, he’s the smartest at picking up concepts and being able to move into different structures.’ But for him it was easy,” Lazary said. “Once you’d talked to him about it, showed him it once, and he’s felt it in a live rep, he can do it in a game no problem. It doesn’t take him 10 games, it’s instantly.”

It’s the last Friday of Misa’s summer before returning to Saginaw to begin his second OHL training camp, and from his Oakville, Ont., home shortly after 4 p.m., he’s reflecting on the blur of the last two years and looking ahead to the two to come.

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The exceptional status process was a lot, let alone the 15-year-old OHL season that followed.

There was the mini-essay he had to write explaining why he wanted the status and listing the reasons he deserved it. There was the big sit-down interview with Hockey Canada at his home where they tested his maturity level and asked questions about things that might happen in the OHL and how he might handle them.

Gagner, who has also been through the same process with McDavid as an agent and Tavares as a coach, said Misa’s was more detailed than theirs. There was also more certainty with McDavid during his final year of minor hockey, whereas Misa’s OHL Cup stamped his status (which Frank and Sandra weren’t even sure they wanted to pursue, preferring to see how things went and apply at the last minute).

Hornick and Gagner were confident he’d get it all along, though.

“My opinion has always (been) that if he’s one of the top players in the age group and all of the other top players in the age group are going to the OHL next year, then why not him? It was the same with (Tavares). Yeah, he’s a ’90, but he has always played with ‘89s and has always been one of the top scorers. So if my son (NHLer Sam Gagner) can do it, or Drew Doughty can do it, then (Tavares) can do it. This time around with Michael it was like ‘If Malcolm Spence can do it, then I’m sure Michael can.’ But we’re not the decision-makers.”

When Misa looks back on what he was feeling a year ago as he began his first training camp in Saginaw, he says there were nerves, although advice from McDavid and others helped.

Throughout, he leaned on his older brother, Luke. Though he and Luke are two birth and school years apart, they were born just 14 months and one NHL draft class apart. Misa says his competitiveness comes from Luke, though Hornick jokes that it also comes from Lucio Topatigh, an Italian hockey star on Michael’s mom’s side (Sandra is Italian and Topatigh is her maiden name, while Frank is Polish and Ukrainian) who amassed nearly 2,000 penalty minutes and won seven championships playing at Italy’s professional level.

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Growing up, on top of hockey, Michael and Luke both ran cross-country, the 100- and 200-metres in track and field and were both big into lacrosse during the summers. Battles on the backyard rink, the lacrosse field and the track have now turned into competitions on the golf course and in the gym with their trainer Anthony Belza, a former strength and conditioning coach with the Maple Leafs who they work with through Wasserman. Last year, they also got to play against each other once when Michael’s Spirit faced off against Luke’s Mississauga Steelheads.

When Michael was injured for the first time in his young career after a knee-on-knee hit from London Knights forward Max McCue in February, he called Luke often just to talk and get his advice.

“Luke’s the closest person I have. It’s huge to have an older brother who plays in the OHL,” Michael said.

The injury — which Wasserman staff were in the building for, rushing down to check in on him — brought some adversity.

Michael remembers the impact, the help he needed getting off the ice, the MRI he had the next day (which thankfully revealed no structural damage to his knee but did show a small fracture right below it at the top of his tibia), the long days of rehab that followed, and the 20 games missed.

“I was just trying to stay positive, cheer my team on, and be there for them,” Michael said. “Something I’ve honestly tried to focus on a lot is just not dealing with the pressure. There was a lot of pressure on me in my first season so I tried to block it out, not look at social media or anything, and just prove it on the ice.”

If not for the injury, Drinkill thinks Michael would have broken Tavares’ exceptional status year scoring record of 77 points.

“It was tough on him,” Drinkill said. “But he trained extremely hard to get back, did everything we asked and our trainers and doctors asked him to do and then some, and got back as quick as possible. We really missed him on the ice, that’s for sure. You always know you’re going to miss a star player but when you take somebody like Michael out of the lineup it puts other players in situations that are more minutes than they need to be playing, it trickles down the lineup, and it hurts.”

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Though Michael felt good after four weeks, his parents, Gagner, Hornick and the Spirit all wanted him to be as ready mentally as he was physically before he stepped back onto the ice.

Then he registered two assists in his return.

“He got on the ice and he was his same competitive self right from the get-go and that’s when you know you have a true star on your hands,” Drinkill said.

With the benefit of hindsight, Michael’s thankful for every part of his 15-year-old season, the injury included, and knows he’s a different player and person today than he would have been had he had to play another year of minor hockey.

That perspective is among the things that have always stood out to Gagner about Misa.

“He’s a very intelligent kid. He’s able to put things in the right priority. He hated missing games but he understood the process,” Gagner said. “Again, he just passed another test going through that.”

Playing in the OHL as an underager didn’t just come with the adversity of the injury, either. In the OHL playoffs, difficult matchups against a veteran Sting team that included big, physical defencemen like Blackhawks prospect Ethan Del Mastro (who was tasked with shutting Michael down) meant new challenges on the ice, too.

“It’s tough for a guy who has just turned 16 to handle that. But (McDavid) went through it and had periods where it was difficult in terms of attention from other teams,” Gagner said. “But he knows teams are setting up things to stop him and he’s going to have to adjust his game. And the proof has been evident that he has handled it well until this point. He just has to continue that.”

Everyone knows the attention he has received on and off the ice isn’t going anywhere, either.

“We try to help him monitor that so that he doesn’t have to deal with so much for his age. But it’s inevitable. He gets more interviews than most and he’ll grow with it over time. But he just has to keep things in perspective,” Gagner said. “And being in the league a year earlier gives him an advantage over his peer group and he wants to continue to maintain that advantage to compete for that position at the top of the draft.”

His rookie season also brought about learning a new position, with Lazary playing the 5-foot-11 natural centre mostly on the wing (between the preseason, regular season and playoffs, Michael took just 157 draws, winning 48.4 percent of them).

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Michael hopes to get back to playing the middle eventually but is more concerned about winning an OHL title and the Memorial Cup, which the Spirit will host this season, first.

“(The Memorial Cup) gets my heartbeat up,” Michael said. “It gives me adrenaline. I’m excited to play in those atmospheres.”

Lazary expects Michael to play both centre and wing again in his second season, mostly so he can play with one of Golden Knights prospect Matyas Sapovaliv or Wild prospect Hunter Haight, who he calls two of the best centres in the OHL (in their push for the Memorial Cup, the Spirit expect to add ahead of the OHL trade deadline as well). Then, in his draft year, Lazary plans to transition Misa back to a full-time centre.

“We’ve talked to him about it quite a bit because the one thing with him is when he gets the puck, when he’s supporting the puck low and slow and he’s getting good touches in the middle of the ice, like he’s an automatic zone-exit machine because he can weight-shift a guy and turn that puck into a clean breakout because of his elusiveness,” Lazary said.

More than anything else, though, Lazary and Drinkill are just excited for the hockey world to see Misa on the CHL’s biggest stage — something no other exceptional status player had the chance to do.

“It’s an opportunity to go into a highly competitive environment where teams are going to be all over him for 10 straight days against older, highly drafted players, and he’s going to get to do his thing,” Lazary said.

Drinkill knows Michael’s ready for the spotlight that will follow him out of the Memorial Cup and into his third and likely final OHL season before the 2025 draft, too.

He saw it firsthand last year in everything he did — in how he handled the move to the United States, his patience with the lineups of kids waiting for his autograph after every game at home and on the road, everything.

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The Memorial Cup will just be an introduction, a taste of what’s to come.

“I think a spotlight like that, he’ll take it and run with it,” Drinkill said. “To me, the best players rise when the spotlight’s on them the most and he has done that, he has proven that everywhere he has been.”

(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic. Photos courtesy of Frank Misa and from Natalie Shaver / OHL)

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