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Former Oakville Rangers Captain Callum Ritchie receives OHL rookie of the month and a chance to represent Canada

Ian Goodall/Goodall Media
Ian Goodall/Goodall Media

What a week it has been for Oakville native Callum Ritchie. 

Back in June, Callum was selected second overall by the Oshawa Generals in the 2021 OHL priority selection after many years with the Oakville Rangers. Now he has been named the OHL’s rookie of the month and on Nov. 3, he was selected to participate in the new Capital City Challenge.

Ritchie has had an unbelievable start to this season. In ten games Callum has scored seven goals and five assists totalling 12 points as a rookie who has not played a full hockey season since before the pandemic. 

Ritchie started his OHL career with five goals in five straight games from Oct. 8 to Oct. 17, 2021.

That stretch of games tied him with Leaf's captain and Oakville native John Tavares for the most goals scored in consecutive games by a rookie in Oshawa Generals history. He also becomes the first Oshawa Generals player to earn this acknowledgment since 2017 when it was won by Allan McShane.

When asked about the acknowledgment Callum said: "It was a bit of a shock but I felt that I had a good start to the season and I want to keep working hard, our team has started winning more games near the end of the month so hopefully that continues."

Callum was also named to Team Canada’s roster for the new Capital City Challenge.

The Capital City Challenge is a new one-time event that is made to replace the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge. The tournament was set to take place in Charlottetown, P.E.I but it was cancelled due to COVID-19.

When asked about the event Callum said: "It's an extreme honour and I'm really excited to be a part of it, I'm really looking forward to learning from the coaching and the staff there."

This new event will be set to take place in Ottawa from Nov. 26 - Dec. 1 at TD Place Arena, home of the OHL’s Ottawa 67s.

"This is a unique opportunity for our 2005-born men’s players, who will step on the ice with Hockey Canada for the first time after only being able to connect virtually over the past few months," said Scott Salmond, senior vice-president of hockey operations with Hockey Canada.

"We look forward to gathering in Ottawa as we begin to put our off-ice work into practice, and the Capital City Challenge provides an opportunity to introduce our under-17 athletes to the Program of Excellence while supporting Canada’s National Women’s Team in its preparations for the Olympics."

The tournament will feature four teams, three of the teams will be U17 Canadian players representing team Red, Team White, and Team Black. The final team will be Canada’s National Women’s Hockey team. 

This means that Callum and many other Canadian Hockey League players are about to go up against Winter Olympic medalists such as Marie-Philip Poulin and Natalie Spooner.

Callum will also be joined by all four of his Oakville Ranger teammates in Luke Misa, Matthew Soto, Nick Lardis, and Owen Outwater as they were also selected to participate in this tournament and there is potential for some of those players to reunite.

When asked about maybe playing with his former teammates Callum responded by saying "I've actually been talking to them about that, it would be really cool to play with them again just to see if our chemistry is still there after all of this time off."


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