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Mitten Hockey story card: Saginaw Spirit, OHL
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The Spirit can score with anyone. Climbing the West will take a better penalty kill

Saginaw’s offense and draft talent rank among the OHL’s best, but the penalty kill and slow starts stand between the Spirit and the top of the West.

Shaun
4–7 minutes
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The Saginaw Spirit have one of the most dangerous offenses in the Ontario Hockey League and, on paper, one of its deepest pools of NHL talent. What they haven’t had yet this fall is the defensive consistency to turn that into a perch near the top of the West Division.

Through 13 games, Saginaw is 6-4-2-1 with 15 points, third in the West and four points behind first-place Soo, with Flint also ahead of it. That’s a solid position, not a commanding one, and the gap between the two says a lot about where this team is and what has to change.

The offense is real

Start with what works, because it works very well. Captain Dima Zhilkin and Braidy Wassilyn are tied for the OHL scoring lead with 24 points apiece (12 goals, 12 assists each) through 13 games. Zhilkin opened the season with a 13-game point streak, the longest in the league this season, and has five power-play goals. Wassilyn, acquired from London, scored in each of his first seven games with Saginaw, the longest goal streak by a player starting his time with the club, and his 12 power-play points lead the team.

Behind them, Brody Pepoy has 14 points (7-7—14), and Dmitry Savin, a Russian rookie, has 10 points (4-6—10), fourth among OHL first-year players. When the Spirit get rolling, they can bury a team: they scored nine at Sarnia on Oct. 16, with four power-play goals on nine chances, then put seven more on the Sting the next night.

That firepower is why NHL Central Scouting named seven Spirit players to its preliminary watch list for the 2027 NHL Draft on Oct. 26, the most of any team in the Canadian Hockey League, as Mitten Hockey reported Tuesday. Zhilkin and defenseman Levi Harper both earned A ratings, the mark of first-round candidates. Central Scouting director Karl Stewart called Zhilkin “the smartest player on the ice.” Harper set a Spirit record for a first-year defenseman with 57 points last season and has 10 points in seven games this fall.

The weak spots

The frank part of the picture is on the other side of the puck, and it isn’t new. Saginaw allowed the most goals in the OHL last season, and The Hockey News’ preseason preview pointed to the defense as the area that still needed help, even with Tyler Martyniuk and Kade Meyer joining the blue line.

The clearest problem this season is the penalty kill. As of The Hockey News’ Oct. 21 power rankings, Saginaw’s was tied with London’s for the worst in the league. For a team whose offense can win most even-strength battles, giving those goals back shorthanded is the fastest way to turn two points into one, or none.

Slow starts are the second issue. In the Oct. 23 rivalry game at the Dow Event Center, Flint led 3-0 after the first period. Saginaw clawed all the way back, outshooting the Firebirds 38-25 for the night and earning a point, but a team can’t count on erasing three-goal holes against the West’s best. The next night in Flint, the Spirit outshot the Firebirds 29-23 and still spent the final two periods chasing after a first period that went the other way.

That pattern, more shots but not more goals, points to the structure in front of the net more than to effort. The Spirit are generating plenty. The issue is how many quality chances the group as a whole gives up in its own end, and how often the opposition cashes in with the man advantage.

Depth on the back end has also been tested. Drew Roscoe, a 6-foot-8 defenseman who earned a B rating from Central Scouting, is out with an upper-body injury, which leaves the defense corps without one of its bigger bodies.

The rivalry measuring stick

The I-75 Divide Cup is the most visible yardstick, and Flint holds a 2-0 lead in the season series after the Oct. 23-24 home-and-home. The Firebirds have been built on keeping the puck out of their net; the Spirit have been built on putting it in. Over a full season, the West tends to reward the first approach unless the second comes with at least league-average defense and special teams.

The good news for Saginaw is that nobody is running away with the West. With most of the 68-game schedule still ahead, a four-point gap in late October is very closable.

What it would take to climb

Mitten Hockey’s read: this is a top-half OHL team with a top-tier offense, and the path upward runs through three fixable things.

  • A middle-of-the-pack penalty kill. The Spirit don’t need an elite kill. Getting out of the league’s basement alone would likely be worth several points over the next month.
  • Better first periods. The comeback against Flint showed what this group can do once it settles in. Playing that way from the opening faceoff keeps the offense from having to bail out the scoreboard.
  • Tighter team defense in front of the crease. Saginaw has two NHL-drafted goaltenders in Brady Knowling and Stepan Shurygin. Cleaning up the chances allowed in front of them is the most direct way to turn shot advantages into wins.

If those come together, the West is wide open. If they don’t, the Spirit will still be one of the most entertaining teams in the league, but likely closer to the middle of the division than the top.

A Red Wings connection

One more reason for Detroit fans to keep an eye on Saginaw: former Red Wings goaltender Chris Osgood is a partner in the club, having joined the Saginaw Spirit ownership group in August 2016, according to the team. With seven draft-list players and a scoring race led by two of its forwards, the Spirit are giving him, and everyone else in the Great Lakes Bay Region, plenty to watch.

Watch: Saginaw Spirit video from the Oct. 23 game against Flint (Saginaw Spirit).

Sources

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