Kingston Frontenacs GameDay March 19, 2016

in this special from sportsnet, gare joyce looks at how the trade for
michael dal colle was a game changer for the kingston frontenacs
Days or weeks after he hoisted the
Memorial Cup and skated with it at the
Colisée in Quebec City last May, the
realization hit Michael Dal Colle. Making the
New York Islanders out of training camp was
a possibility, but it was a big ask at the same
time. And if he didn’t, then the left-winger
from Woodbridge, Ont., was going to be back
with the Oshawa Generals. Yeah, he’d get to
watch the banner raised in the Gens’ home
opener, and, yeah, he’d be set to rip through
the OHL after scoring 42 goals and 93 points
in 56 games in the 2014–15 season. He
realized that he’d be going back to Oshawa,
but not that Generals team.
“They were going to be rebuilding,” Dal
Colle says. “It was going to be a different
situation.”
When Dal Colle didn’t make the Islanders
out of training camp last fall, some wondered
if the Islanders might have missed with his
selection fifth overall in the 2014 draft. Most
who wondered were professional wonderers,
media skeptics and the like. It’s hard to figure
how anyone can come down so hard on a kid
when he isn’t deemed ready to play for a NHL
playoff team just a couple of months after his
19th birthday, but they did. And those who
judged Dal Colle harshly because of that
pointed to his early-season performance back
in Oshawa as proof of what they would call
his crashing stock—only eight goals and 25
points in 30 games.
“It was a tough transition for me, a different
role, different expectations as a team,” Dal
Colle says.
And Dal Colle was also knocked when
he was cut at the world junior tryouts for the
second time in two years.
What might have been a lost season was
8 KINGSTON FRONTENACS GAMEDAY MAGAZINE