By Michael Mroziak
For Buffalo Jr. Sabres General Manager Sean Wallace, preparing for the 2026-27 Ontario Junior Hockey League season had a similar feel to rebuilding the team three summers ago.
“It’s almost similar to our first year coming back from COVID, where you had to start completely from scratch,” he said.
This time, the team wasn’t returning after a forced three-year hiatus. Five players are back from last season. But all but one defenseman, both goalies, and a majority of the forwards are in their OJHL rookie seasons.
One of the returning forwards, Carson Joy, was named captain before the season opener.
“It’s a great honor,” Joy said. “First of all, I just love the team. It’s a huge responsibility to keep everyone on track and on the right pace, going in the right direction. That’s the whole thing for what I want to build and what the assistants want to build.”
Named assistant captains were defenseman Brayden Howard – the lone veteran defenseman – and forward Davin Krakowiak.
“They’re great players. They’re even better dudes,” Joy said. “They always have each other’s backs, have my back, have everyone else in the team’s back, and they’re just great people.”
The other returning veterans are forwards Jake Brown and Rylan Moukperian. Cole Miller was a brief call-up to the Jr. Sabres’ 20U squad last year, scoring one goal and two assists in four games. He earned a regular spot with the Jr. Sabres this season, led the team in points during the preseason and scored two goals in the team’s 4-2 loss to Leamington in the second game of the 2026-27 season.
There was also a change behind the Buffalo bench. Wallace, who served dual roles as general manager and head coach since the team’s return from COVID, gave up the latter role in the spring to work exclusively as GM. Taking the reins as head coach is Dylan Seitz, who previously served in an assistant role before serving one season on the coaching staff of the Ontario Hockey League’s Niagara Ice Dogs.
Michael Bennett returns as Associate Head Coach, while Tyler Riter and Ryan Kates round out the assistants.
Seitz looks forward to the new season with a new team.
“It’s a fresh batch, open canvas, and you can kind of groom how you want to build that team,” Seitz said. “I think that the guys have done a great job in the last two to three weeks of buying into the culture, and they’re a very close group already.”
The team put in a busy preseason with five games, and in between spent bonding time together including a team dinner and a night out at a Buffalo Bisons minor league baseball game.
“Hockey players are the same kind of people. We all gel really easily together,” Joy said. “But it starts in the locker room. If you’re not a locker room guy, you’re not going to be a fit in our team. And everyone on our team right now is a great locker room guy. They’re great people, great hockey players.”
Logan Vitez and Montgomery Lade are this year’s goaltending tandem. Finding this year’s netminders and other needed players kept Wallace busyover the summer.
Actually, even while last season was still in progress.
“The process starts a year ahead of time,” Wallace said. “Now just being general manager, I’ll have even more time to get out and watch games and build lists. And you know, we have some good contacts and we got on some good players. And regardless of the turnover, we’re really excited about the group. It’s a younger group. I think there’s 17 rookies on the roster, something like that. But we think there’s a lot of capable players that can step in and play in this league and have success.”
