Lucas Punkari
After spending the last couple of seasons taking the ice for the Thunder Bay Kings’ organization, Jordan Larson is looking forward to the chance to play for his local hockey team this season as he’ll be suiting up with the Fort Frances Lakers this winter.
“I haven’t been in town for two years,” Larson noted.
“To be able to finally play in front of my family and my friends once again is going to be something that will be a great feeling,” he added.
Larson, who turned 16 in May, was acquired by the Lakers in a trade with the Duluth Clydesdales following the SIJHL draft, and eventually was signed following the Lakers’ rookie camp in mid-July.
“Jordan’s a player that is very dynamic offensively and he’s a kid that reads the ice really well,” said Lakers’ head coach and general manager Wayne Strachan.
“Last year at our summer camp, he was a very strong player as a 15-year-old, and he was one of the top five forwards during that camp,” Strachan recalled.
“So this year, he was able to come in with a little more experience, which was a great help.”
Following a 125-point season with the Bantam Kings in 2009/10, Larson suited up for the Minor Midget Kings this past season, where he led the team in scoring with 43 goals and 43 assists in 59 games.
“It was a good year last season,” Larson said.
“Even though our team didn’t have much success in the OHL Cup [where the Kings finished with a 0-3-1 record], it was still an enjoyable year and I played really hard all season long to try and get drafted,” he added.
The Fort Frances native ended up having to wait a while to find out which team had selected him during the OHL draft, which took place on May 7.
In the end, he would be taken in the 11th round of the priority selection by the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds.
“It was a really long day,” Larson admitted. “I was at a U17 camp to try and get a spot for Team Ontario, and all of us there were just watching the draft on our phones and things like that.
“I didn’t really know when my name was going to be called, and I finally just decided to let it go and just let things happened.
“But I finally heard that my name got called, and I was pretty excited to be going to the Soo,” he smiled.
Larson got his first chance to showcase his skills to the Greyhound brass at the team’s development camp, which took place in Sault Ste. Marie at the end of May.
“I thought the camp went very well,” he remarked.
“There was a lot of off-ice work . . . as the Greyhounds like to make sure that you are in shape and in your top condition when you play for them, and that personally gives me something to work for,” added Larson, who stands 5’9” and weighs in at 180 pounds.
One member of the Greyhound staff who was a keen observer on how Larson would preform was general manager Kyle Dubas, who was seeing the forward in action for the very first time.
“Jordan came in here and he showed exactly why our staff wanted to pick him,” noted Dubas, who became the Greyhounds’ GM in April.
“He showed his skill, he showed that he has some good ability,” Dubas added. “And while he’s not the biggest kid size-wise, he’s got some good feet and he’s very smart around the ice.”
The next stop for Larson this summer was the Team Ontario under-17 camp, which took place in Thunder Bay in early July, where his team (Team White) came away with the title.
“The camp was fun to be a part of, but being able to win the tournament made the whole week even better,” Larson enthused.
“Coaches like to have winners, and I showed to everyone that was there during the week that I can win,” he added.
Teaming up with players such as first-round OHL selections Darnell Nurse (Sault Ste. Marie) and Mitchell Dempsey (Plymouth Whalers), Larson was able to acclimatize himself quite well during the course of the week—notching four points in four games.
“For me, the biggest thing that I took away from the camp was just the overall pace of the game,” Larson said. “You are going up against all of the top guys in the province, and you have to keep up with them if you want to try and be that top guy yourself and be better than them.
“You always have something to try and work for in trying to be better than someone else,” he reasoned.
Also attending the camp was Dubas, whose club was well-represented with seven of their prospects attending the camp.
“All four of our guys on the winning team [Larson, Nurse, Mac Clutsam, and Tyler Ganly] all struggled on the first night, but on the second night they all bounced back really well,” Dubas noted.
“Jordan skated physically when he needed to be, and he showed a little bit of his skill on the second night, and he showed to us [the Greyhounds] that he’s not that far off.
“He’ll need to have a tremendous summer here in terms of his workout regiment, along with having a great year this winter with Fort Frances, and we will continue to monitor him and get out to see him play as much as humanly possible,” Dubas added.
While most of the top draft picks for the Greyhounds will be attending the team’s training camp, which gets underway Aug. 30, prospects such as Larson, who were taken in the later rounds of this year’s draft, will not be among those being invited for now.
“We want those kids to get acclimated to their Junior ‘A’ teams,” Dubas explained.
“If you get a kid away from his Junior ‘A’ camp to come here, they sometimes come back to find that they have been passed on the depth chart or that it may hurt how they stand within the eyes of the team, and that’s key thing we want to avoid,” he stressed.
“For someone like Jordan, we’re going to have him continue to stay in touch with Wes Clark [the Greyhounds’ director of player development], and watch him play lots throughout the year so that he’s ready to come in and be a big part of our team as we move forward.”
That process is set to begin this winter with the Lakers, where Strachan feels Larson is a player who can make an immediate impact.
“I don’t think it’ll be too long before Jordan starts to put up some numbers that will not only help himself, but our entire team,” Strachan said.
“What we are looking for with him, though, is to just be as steady as he can be out there on the ice.”
In the meantime, Larson is focused on getting himself into the best shape possible for the upcoming SIJHL campaign, which he feels is something that will be a key factor into how he performs this winter.
“I’ve just been doing a lot of strength training this summer to hopefully get myself even stronger,” he stressed.
“When you are face-to-face with the older guys in this league and actually play against them, you need to be a strong player, and I’m hoping to do just that and get better as a result,” he remarked.
