With 96 of the best 15- and 16-year-old hockey players on earth in one place, the OHL combine offers a unique glimpse at the next generation of junior hockey stars.

Words by Gare Joyce | Photography by Paul Bolasco | Video by Justin Singer and James Michael Chiang

Dozens of the best young talents born in the year 2000 gathered at GM Centre for the Ontario Hockey League’s combine testing. The scene could almost pass for the NHL Central Scouting Service combine. True, the OHL version isn’t quite as elaborate and the dry-land testing stations aren’t as numerous—there’s vertical jump but no bench press, Wingate bicycle testing but no VO2. There are a lot of team executives and big-name agents, although not any live television coverage or announcements of test results. And, yeah, the players at the NHL combine look young but at the OHL event they look positively callow. But the OHL does put the players through rigours that they won’t see if they ever get invited to the NHL combine: on-ice tests. And when the 15- and 16-year-olds put on the pads and skates, they look a lot more like future junior-hockey stars than boys skipping school on a Friday in the spring.