Sapurji: Call him Captain Chris...

Plymouth Whalers sniper Chris Terry is quickly becoming one of my go-to OHLers for two very important reasons:

1. He always has his cellphone on.
2. He always answers his cellphone.

Of course it helps that he's extremely articulate and a very good player, but when you're a lowly OHL reporter and you spend most of your day chasing comments from 17-year-old's who forget to call, lose your number, forget their cells or have their cells turned off... guys who actually answer their phones are gold (that goes for GMs and coaches too).

Chris Terry is a go-to guy for the Whalers too, as they've named him captain for the 2008-09 season.

I had a chance to talk to Terry earlier in the week, I was in the midst of doing my OHL “preview” for the Star.

According to Terry, the Whalers could be the surprise story in the Western Conference, while everyone is busy focusing on the Windsor Spitfires and London Knights.

"I think we’re flying under the radar," said Terry. "I don’t think a lot of people expect us to be all that good, so I think we’ll surprise a lot of people.

"We’ve got a good group of young players like (centre) Tyler Seguin and (defenceman) Beau Schmitz, plus a lot of returning players from last year."

There's a lot of hype about Schmitz, so I'm excited to get my first look at Plymouth (probably on the OHL action Pak).

It'll also be interesting to see how Terry performs after last year's breakout season where he scored 44 goals and added 57 assists for 101 points in 68 games.

"My first two years I played behind some big name guys like (James) Neal and (Evan) Brophy and last year I had the chance to move to the first line and got to be a leader on the team," said Terry, who was invited to Canada's world junior summer camp.

CLOSED CRYSTAL BALL: A couple people have emailed asking when my OHL rankings/predictions will run in the paper.
They won’t. Predictions are for chumps psychics.
I will either do what I did last year and let my year-old niece pick the winner (she picked Kitchener last season) or I will pick a name out of a hat.

I figure I’ve got at least as good a chance as the pundits at The Hockey News who are always right about everything.

As always - questions, comments, compliments, complaints, threats etc: sunaya19@hotmail.com