London Knights assistant coach Dylan Hunter will tell you that everything changed for his team in the middle of December.
It’s not a coincidence, he’ll also tell you, that that’s when everything changed for Sam Dickinson, too.
From Dec. 14 to Jan. 20, the Knights won 14 straight games and took over first place in the OHL standings. Around that time, they also lost their two first-round picks, defenseman Oliver Bonk and forward Easton Cowan, to the Canadian world junior team. Another of their top prospects, Denver Barkey, also attended camp.
In their absence, Dickinson, the team’s next first-round pick, soon to be taken at the top of the 2024 NHL Draft, took over. They hoped to play to above .500 without them. They went undefeated. Before their departure, Dickinson was already a 17-year-old defenseman who’d often play 25 minutes a night. Without them, he played 30-plus.
“He really started coming into his own, not just being a top four on our team or a top three. He was playing penalty kill No. 1, power play, No. 1 pair. And we went on a roll,” Hunter said in a recent interview with The Athletic. “That was kind of his coming out party.”
Ever since, the Knights haven’t looked back. Neither has Dickinson.
He has been a top prospect for some time now. A captain and alternate captain at two separate events for Hockey Canada. The fourth pick and first defenseman taken in the 2022 OHL draft. Voted to the OHL’s First All-Rookie Team.
But now he’s something else altogether — not just a first-round pick, but a likely top-10 one, and maybe even a top-five one.
And those who know him have stories like Hunter’s that explain how.
Paul Ruta first met Dickinson when he was 11 years old. It was the springtime and he was at a track meet with St. Mike’s, the all-boys private school where he teaches in Toronto, when he noticed this kid from Crescent School, another local private school, who looked athletic.
“Great run,” he said to the kid after a race.
“Do you work for St. Mike’s?” the kid responded, noticing the ‘M’ on his shirt. “My brother goes there.”
After striking up a conversation, Ruta realized that Dickinson’s brother was Jack, a student in his homeroom class at the time.
After sharing a laugh, Ruta asked Dickinson if his parents were at the event and he pointed at his dad, Steve — whom Ruta had met that fall — standing nearby.
That conversation with Dickinson led to a conversation with Steve, which led to Ruta learning that Dickinson played AAA hockey, and then another conversation with his mom, Megan, who wanted Dickinson to return to Crescent for Grade 7 (which is when St. Mike’s starts).
After some convincing and a tour, Ruta, who ran the gym and coached the hockey team at St. Mike’s, managed to talk Dickinson, Megan and Steve into the idea.
That summer, before Dickinson enrolled, Ruta also invited him to train with him so that he could get accustomed to life at the school and meet some of the kids. That September, Dickinson was then in Ruta’s Grade 7 class.
His first impression in the classroom was that he was a fantastic kid and student.
“Not too many 12- to 13-year-old boys carried himself the way he did,” Ruta said. “He went about his business a little bit of a different way. There was a certain maturity about him that others didn’t have. He had very nice balance between the rigorous academic schedule at St. Mike’s as well as his highly competitive athletic schedule outside of the school. He was very focused and mature about his goals.”
In the years since, they have trained each summer together and he has learned that that first impression was the right one.
“There has been six years of continuous growth regardless of whether he’s here in the building or in London and always staying in touch,” Ruta said. “He’s pretty freaking disciplined. He has sacrificed his summer for the most part to put in a full-time job here basically. He’s motivated, he’s…
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