March 22, 2024, Mississauga, ON – …. Dave Steele of the Collingwood Blues is the Ontario Junior Hockey League’ Executive of the Year, the league announced today.
Steele is president and governor of the Blues. The team won the 2023 OJHL playoff championship, the Nutrafarm Championship Series, and represented the league at the Centennial Cup national championships in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba last May.
This season, they captured the Brant Snow Memorial Trophy as OJHL regular season champs. The top-seeded Blues are scheduled to open the second round of the 2024 playoffs at home tonight against the Oakville Blades.
Steele and his wife Christina bought the Kingston Voyageurs in 2019 and moved them to their adopted home town of Collingwood.
The team has been a hit on and off the ice in Collingwood almost since Day 1. The Blues led the 24-team OJHL in attendance this season, averaging 847 fans per game. The team hosted the OJHL All-Star Celebration weekend and the Cottage Cup preseason tournament the past two seasons.
How does Steele sum up the past five years?
“Just an unbelievable amount of hard work,” he told the OJHL, “whether it’s driving the bus or fixing the bus myself, which I’ve done both of, or meeting with community people to try and develop relationships, meeting with clubs and developing an executive…”
“We won a bid in 2019, in April, to have the team start there in September. I had no players. So our first challenge was to try and build a competitive team in the OJ, which is an incredibly competitive league, in three and a half months. And we managed to come out of our first year as a top-three team in our division, which was incredibly successful.”
“Even considering COVID, we continued to try and find ways to develop and we signed a whole pile of young 2003s as a core group. And we’ve kept those ‘03s’ that have driven our program’s success for the last four years.”
His philosophy?
“The premise why my wife and I operate this team is to grow relationships,” he said. “With so many friends in Collingwood now, we have so many good relationships that are worth it. We do well on the ice, we’re doing right by our community, we’re making it better, and leaving it better than we found it. And we’re successful because of it.”
The Collingwood community is close to his heart.
“It’s making relationships, understanding that there’s a cycle to every community, and a healthy community, you’re going to have people that have hockey teams that have ownerships that have influence,” he said. “You’re going to have people in your community that are less privileged, that are trying to rise up, and create a life for themselves.
“And every opportunity, our hockey team has to connect with the individuals trying to get their head above water, and our team and our efforts are there. Whether it be financial support, or going to build a community garden, which we’ve done before. Anything like that, we try to attach ourselves to that. Because what happens in those relationships is that person then becomes a good member of society and earns a living. And then they’re going to have families and they’re going to come to my hockey games and they’re going to support the team. They’re going to pay for the chuck-a-pucks and they’re going to help that money go back towards somebody like them. That had a helping hand at one point, right.
“These teams are community engagement projects. You’ve got something that people have spirit and pride in in the community, something that gives back to the community.”
“So I love the sport for the players and the community. I’m teaching these kids how to be people, good humans so that if they ever are in a position where they’re leading a community, they have to find and seek out people to help.”
Steele is especially proud of his team’s work with youth hockey in Collingwood.
“The whole minor hockey system has now become the Junior Blues,” he said. “Because of the Blues Development Schools (and learn-to-skate programs) that we’ve run we’ve brought a level of skill hockey up in Collingwood and they went from a B to an A centre. Wonderful. Girls hockey is no different. Their enrollment has gone up to 100 per cent since we came to town… It’s a win-win all around.”
What’s next in Collingwood?
“Once you have a little bit of success, and you get a reputation, then it becomes easier than the first year when nobody knew who we were,” Steele said after delivering a speech to a 400-member service club in Collingwood yesterday. “And that doesn’t mean our work stops. We still work as hard as we did in the first year. We’re not done yet. We have huge goals for next year to improve our program, because now we’re competing nationally … We look at competitiveness in Collingwood. What are the best development teams in the country doing and how can we match them? Or exceed them with work.”
Steele has been “proud” to serve on the OJHL’s Board of Directors, its leadership team and the onboarding committee that welcomes new ownership. That includes his willingness to share best practices with all fellow owners across the 24-team league.
“There hasn’t been anything that I’ve said no to, which is probably to my detriment,” he said. “But I love the league. And I think there’s a lot of unbelievable people and resources we have that make it so great. And I think that, more and more as we move forward, we’re going to become a contender across the nation as a league.”
Dave Steele will be honoured along with the other OJHL award recipients at a ceremony during the OJHL Nutrafarms Championship Series in late April.
The OJHL is announcing its 2023-24 award winners throughout the first three rounds of the playoffs.
MONDAY: Humanitarian of the Year
About the OJHL – “League of Choice”
The Ontario Junior Hockey League is the largest Junior ‘A’ league operating under the auspices of the Canadian Junior Hockey League with 24 member clubs. A proud member of the Canadian Junior Hockey League and Ontario Hockey Association, the OJHL was originally named the Ontario Provincial Junior ‘A’ Hockey League and it was formed out of the Central Junior ‘B’ Hockey League in 1993-94. With a long and storied history of developing players for the next level, including U SPORTS, the NCAA, CHL, minor pro ranks and the NHL, the OJHL has had more than 45 NCAA Division I scholarships already this season.
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