The wider hockey world is starting to notice what many Colts fans have known since not long after Kashawn Aitcheson came to Barrie.
The 17-year-old defenceman has a certain ‘it’ quality about him.
If he’s on your team, you love him. If not, the rangy blue-liner agitates. Quickly and often.
Aitcheson and the rest of the Colts are in action tonight at Sadlon Arena against the Mississauga Steelheads. Game time is 7:30.
“I like to play hard-nosed,” Aitcheson said with a hint of irony in his voice, as if his team-leading 102 penalty minutes didn’t already illustrate that fact.
The Colts selected the Toronto native — he grew up in the Beaches — with the 50th-overall pick in the 2022 OHL Priority Selection. He arrived in town not having yet turned 16 — a late-born 2006 — trying to make a team that didn’t really need immediate help on the back end.
Still, Aitcheson did enough to stick around the team even if he didn’t play much at the beginning. Early on, he was often seen in the stands well turned out in a snappy suit and kibitzing with kids who seemed drawn to him.
They were not the only ones.
“He’s one of my favourites,” Colts head coach/general manager Marty Williamson said a couple of weeks ago. “He keeps doing things that you can’t help not to like him. Every game, it’s something different.”
Aitcheson’s name was in the news this week because, well, he doesn’t elicit such a warm and fuzzy reaction on the other team. Sportsnet broadcaster Jeff Marek, an avid follower of junior hockey who co-hosts the popular podcast, 32 Thoughts, with Elliotte Friedman, reported the Sudbury Wolves may have put a bounty on Aitcheson.
The allegation stemmed from a hard hit Aitcheson delivered on the Wolves’ Nathan Villeneuve in a game last month at Sadlon Arena. The Colts caught wind of the potentially dicey situation ahead of a return date in Sudbury a few days later and sat their second-year blue-liner to eliminate any possibility of retribution.
The hit was hard but clean and, after review, was not deemed worthy of a penalty. Aitcheson was challenged to a fight by the Wolves’ Nolan Collins and willingly accepted — he’s dropped the gloves more than a few times since the start of his OHL career.
Villeneuve, a solid second-year forward who is expected to be selected in this year’s NHL Draft, left the ice needing assistance. Villeneuve also missed the Sudbury game, though he returned a few days later to play in the CHL/NHL Top Prospects Game in Moncton, N.B.
The OHL office is looking into the incident and neither team was willing to comment. An interview with Aitcheson was granted under the condition no questions about the Sudbury situation and Marek’s reporting were asked.
Fair enough.
Whatever comes of the incident, a few things are worth noting. Firstly, the Colts play the Wolves three more times in the coming weeks and a first-round playoff match is the most likely scenario right now with about a month left in the schedule.
Most of all, it’s the most obvious proof the Colts have a keeper in Aitcheson. He plays hard, has nice offensive upside (7G, 26A) and is improving in the one area that needs the most work: his skating.
One NHL scout consulted for this column said if Aitcheson were eligible for this year’s NHL Draft — he missed the cutoff by about a week — he’d be taken in the first 100 selections. The same scout pointed out this year’s draft crop is considered below average and Aitcheson and a few other late-born 2006s would boost the overall quality if they were eligible. For what it’s worth, Villeneuve’s draft stock is about the same as Aitcheson’s, though they are not eligible at the same time.
Williamson, who acknowledged hearing similar sentiment from NHL scouts about Aitcheson, has in the past talked about how difficult it can be to find players who play with an edge without sacrificing certain nuances that make them top juniors, and good pros. The Colts bench boss was asked if he noticed a series of subtle plays Aitcheson made in a critical sequence in a home game late last month against the Oshawa Generals.
In that game, Aitcheson took a hard knock in front of his own net, played through it and tapped the puck up away from danger to his left near the Colts bench, allowing a teammate to retrieve it and set up a goal.
The Colts won the game in a shootout on a beauty scored by Roenick Jodoin.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Williamson said when asked about that specific play and Aitcheson’s tendency to mix finesse with graft. “He does stuff like that all the time.”
If you gaze over the Colts’ box scores and game summaries since last spring, you’ll find Aitcheson often engages the other team’s best player that results in a penalty for both. During Wednesday’s overtime win over the Attack in Owen Sound, Aitcheson did precisely that to Orillia’s Colby Barlow, who has been the hottest player in the league since returning from injury just after Christmas. In a home game against the Attack two weeks earlier, Aitcheson drove Barlow to distraction on numerous occasions.
For his part, Aitcheson said he was grateful for the opportunity to grind away in practice last year when playing time was hard to come by. He made specific mention of watching Brandt Clarke and Beau Akey and then Braden Hache, who was dealt to Barrie later in his rookie year.
All three of those players are now either graduated and playing in the NHL (Clarke), injured (Akey) or traded (Hache). Aitchson and recent acquisition Thomas Stewart are the team’s two best defencemen, among a group that is exceedingly young — the Colts have dressed four 2006-born blue-liners in recent games.
Up front, the Colts have been led by captain Beau Jelsma, and NHL Draft hopefuls Cole Beaudoin and Riley Patterson, along with Tai York, Aitcheson’s roommate.
Nothing has come easy this season and the Colts still are an eighth-place team with little margin for error, but there is also a clear sense of optimism.
“We’ve bonded as a group,” Aitcheson said, glowingly, of his teammates.
That’s coming from a guy who makes the opposition see red.
