They were members of the talented Don Mills Flyers team, and now minor hockey teammates Brandt Clarke, Brennan Othmann and Shane Wright are together again at the World Juniors
Three players, one minor hockey team and a legacy that continues to be
built. After first joining forces in minor hockey, Brandt Clarke, Brennan
Othmann and Shane Wright have taken the hockey world by storm and are
reunited again to compete for gold at the 2023 IIHF World Junior Championship.
In 2016, Clarke had just moved from Ottawa to Toronto ahead of his U14 AAA
season. He joined the Greater Toronto Hockey League’s (GTHL) Don Mills
Flyers, where he was introduced to two other players that were new to the
team: Othmann and Wright.
“I actually didn’t know who either of them [was], I just knew some of the
other guys on Don Mills,” Clarke explains. “But we clicked right away, we
were the new guys. We talked, we gelled early and there’s just a connection
there. They’re two special players.”
Othmann and Wright had previously played against each other, but never on
the same team. During a spring tournament, Flyers head coach Marc Slawson
pointed out Wright to Othmann, saying he would likely play with him.
“I looked at Shane on the ice and you automatically saw that he stood out,
and I was excited watching him play,” Othmann says. “He’s a really good
player.”
On the ice, the three Don Mills Flyers quickly gained chemistry with each
other.
“I think we fed off each other really well,” Wright says. “We understood
where each other were on the ice, we’re reacting and reading off each other
on the ice. We just always had that chemistry.”
The team was a force to be reckoned with. During the three years Clarke,
Othmann and Wright wore the Flyers logo, they won three consecutive GTHL
championships, the 2018 All-Ontario U15 AAA Championship and the 2019 OHL
Cup after going 30-0-3 in the GTHL during the 2018-19 regular season.
But the team also faced adversity. In the middle of its U15 championship
campaign, Flyers goaltender Roy Pejcinovski was killed in a triple homicide
along with his mother and 13-year-old sister, Vana, in Ajax, Ont.
“In that situation, you either come together or you spread apart, and our
team obviously came together,” Othmann says.
“It was definitely something that still sticks with us every day,” Clarke
adds. “I still think of Roy every single day.”
With Pejcinovski in their hearts, Don Mills…
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