HIGH ACHIEVERS: Carp’s Mason McTavish youngest player named to Canada’s men’s Olympic hockey team

By Martin Cleary

Teenager Mason McTavish of Carp, ON., is on the move again.

On Tuesday, the flashy and talented centre joined his sixth hockey team this season, when he was named the youngest player to Canada’s 25-man roster for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games, which run Feb. 4-20.

For the second Winter Olympics in a row, Hockey Canada selected the best players available from the European and North American pro, university and junior ranks. The National Hockey League and the NHL Players’ Association decided not to have its star players attend the 2022 Olympics over concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

McTavish will be joined on the Canadian roster by forward Eric O’Dell of Ottawa, who is one of three returning Olympians from the 2018 squad, and goaltender Devon Levi, who played the 2019-20 season with the CCHL’s Carleton Place Canadians.

Ottawa’s Max Veronneau of Leksands IF in the Swedish Hockey League was named as one of six taxi squad members.

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The only junior player selected from the Canadian Hockey League, McTavish won’t turn 19 until Sunday. But he has made a big impact on hockey observers with his drive, puck handling skills and ability to create offensive chances and finish scoring plays.

After playing 13 games for Olten EHC in Switzerland for the 2020-21 season, where he had nine goals and two assists, McTavish was drafted third overall by the Anaheim Ducks and signed a three-year entry level contract on Aug. 13.

McTavish made his NHL debut with the Ducks at the start of the season and scored two goals and added one assist in nine games. He was assigned to the AHL’s San Diego Gulls Oct. 28 and counted one goal and one assist in three games.

By Nov. 20, he returned to his OHL junior club, the Peterborough Petes, the same team his father Dale played for in the early 1990s. Mason McTavish played five games for the Petes and compiled seven points on six goals and one assist.

Hockey Canada selected McTavish to its world junior U20 hockey team, but the global championship only lasted four days as the pandemic produced too many positive tests, which sparked teams to forfeit games. But in Canada’s two games, McTavish was a remarkable player and contributed three goals and two assists.

By the time he returned to playing in 2022, he had been traded to the OHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs on Jan. 9. In his first two games, he scored three goals and added two assists.

O’Dell, who is playing in his sixth season with a fourth different team in the KHL, returns to the Olympics, where he helped Canada win a bronze medal in 2018. He scored one goal and added one assist in six games.

Drafted by Anaheim 39th overall in 2008, O’Dell never played for the California team. After two seasons with the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets (three goals and eight points in 42 games), he signed a one-year, two-way deal with the Ottawa Senators.

He was assigned to the AHL’s Binghamton Senators for most of the 2015-16 season (18-19-37 in 50 games) before being involved in a seven-player trade with Buffalo Sabres and being sent to the Rochester Americans (7-4-11 in 17 games).

O’Dell, 31, joined the KHL in 2016 and has played 260 games, accumulating 67 goals and 147 points.

Levi was a standout goalie for Carleton Place during the 2019-20 season with a record of 34-2-1, a goals-against average of 1.47 and a save percentage of .941.

He has brought that stingy style of play to Boston’s Northeastern University this season. Levi, who is from Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Que., has a 16-7-1 record with nine shutouts, a 1.55 goals-against average and a .948 save percentage.

The seventh-round pick of the Florida Panthers in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft was the starting goalkeeper for Canada at the 2021 world junior hockey championship and won a silver medal.

Veronneau, who played his youth hockey for the Ottawa Sting, Ottawa Junior 67’s, Ottawa Junior Canadians and the Gloucester Rangers before attending Princeton University, is the second leading scorer in the Swedish Hockey League. In 32 games for Leksands IF, he has 21 goals and 18 assists for 39 points.

He played a total of 16 NHL games for the Ottawa Senators in the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons, scoring two goals and adding two assists.

The Canadian men’s hockey team will open the Olympics with preliminary round games against Germany on Feb. 10, the United States on Feb. 12 and China on Feb. 13.