Who Are The Barrie Colts?

The Barrie Colts entered the Ontario Hockey League for the 1995-96 hockey season. In their short history, the Colts have enjoyed great success in the OHL.

Barrie has been to the Robertson Cup finals three times. In 1999-00, just five years after entering the league, the Colts won the Robertson Cup as Ontario Hockey League playoff champions. In 2001-02 and 2009-10, the Colts reached the finals but were ousted. In 2002, they lost out to the Erie Otters and in 2010, they lost out to the Windsor Spitfires.

The Colts made their only appearance at the Memorial Cup in 2000. Barrie won just one game in the three game round-robin, a double overtime thriller over the WHL’s Kootenay Ice. In the Semi-Final, Barrie easily took out the host Halifax Mooseheads before losing in the Memorial Cup final to the Rimouski Oceanic of the QMJHL. Barrie placed two players on the Memorial Cup All-Star team, Eric Reitz on defense and Sheldon Keefe on forward.

This past season, 2009-10, Barrie finished with 57 wins over the 68 game Ontario Hockey League schedule and totaled 116 points. The 116 points was by far good enough to earn the team the Hamilton Spectator Trophy as the OHL’s regular season champion. Unfortunately, it was the Windsor Spitfires that stopped the Colts in their tracks in the playoffs. The Spitfires went on to win their second consecutive Memorial Cup championship.

Bryan Little, currently of the National Hockey League’s Atlanta Thrashers, is Barrie’s all-time leader in goals (153), assists (189) and points (342). Sheldon Keefe holds the Colts single season record for both most points and most assists. Keefe had 73 assists and 121 points in their Robertson Cup winning season of 1999-00. Bryan Cameron set the team’s single season goal scoring record in 2009-10 with 53.

As is the cyclic nature of the Ontario Hockey League, the Colts went from number one in 2009-10 to the basement the following season. Because the league houses players from 16 to 21 years of age, great teams tend to have all their best players graduate at the same time and the rebuilding process must start all over again the next year. However, the process has indeed begun and the Colts should be in the thick of it in the next couple of years.