Erie Otters managing partner Jeremy Wood-Ross hopes Matthew Schaefer plays in the Ontario Hockey League again this winter. The presumptive No. 1 pick in Friday’s NHL Draft only played 17 games for the Otters last season before suffering a broken clavicle in World Junior Championship competition. He doesn’t turn 18 until September. (Players generally can compete in the elite junior level from age 16 to 20, even after they’ve been drafted into the NHL.)
It’s also fine even if Schaefer plays immediately in the NHL. If he goes first to the New York Islanders—and becomes the first OHL player taken No. 1 since Connor McDavid leapt from Erie to Edmonton in 2015—it ”would be incredible for us,” Wood-Ross said. “From a business perspective, it’s infinite opportunity.”
Wood-Ross is focused on expanding the team’s reach with modern marketing efforts, as well as continuing to sign and retain youth talent considering newly available college alternatives. An NCAA rule change will allow OHL players to play college hockey starting this year. Malcolm Spence, Erie’s third-leading points scorer in 2024-25, has already announced he will play for the University of Michigan in 2025-26.
The OHL could land four players in the top five of Friday’s draft, with Spence expected to go later in round one, boosting its case as a premier NHL feeder system.
“It will be our job to make sure that we continue to be very proactive in advancing and improving our system and our programs to continue to maintain that position that we’ve established for ourselves over a long history,” OHL commissioner Bryan Crawford said. “With all these great young players that come as 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds, that they stay here, develop and then have an opportunity to move on—for some that’s the NHL and for some that’ll be the NCAA.”
Having Schaefer picked first overall could be even more meaningful to the Otters’ ownership family, after previous Erie owner Jim Waters died at age 73 in December. “Jim and Schaefer had a very close relationship,” said Wood-Ross, Waters’ son-in-law.
Schaefer has described Waters and his wife, Sheila, as “huge parts of my life.” The defenseman has also dealt with the loss of his mother, Jennifer, to breast cancer in 2024, as well as the death of his billet mother, Emily Matson, who died two months earlier.
“I think my mom’s going to go right into my head when I get picked, because, you know, I wish she could be here,” Schaefer told reporters Thursday. “So, yeah, there’s definitely going to be a lot of things that play a part in it, but it’s more happy tears than anything.”
Waters bought the team out of bankruptcy for roughly $7 million in June 2015. “The only thing I ever wanted to do besides broadcasting is own a sports franchise,” Waters said at the time, “most especially hockey.”
The Otters won an OHL title in 2017 with current Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch, but the team missed out on the playoffs the next four seasons as attendance slipped. The stands began to fill again over the last two years with Schaefer in town, to an average attendance of 4,258 in 2024-25.
Wood-Ross thinks Schaefer can help Erie sustain its appeal, even from afar. The team is launching a new alumni program—akin to university efforts—to bring past stars back to town and expand the benefits of a stint in northwestern Pennsylvania. McDavid returned to Erie in January for a jersey retirement ceremony before a sold-out crowd.
Along the way, Otters leadership hopes to honor Waters’ stewardship of the franchise. “All of our decisions are really around what Jim would want for his legacy,” Wood-Ross said.
