BUFFALO – The human element often gets lost in the excitement generated by teenage hockey phenoms. It can easily be forgotten they’re still kids.
Michael Misa is so talented the Canadian Hockey League granted him exceptional status in 2022, allowing him to play full time for the Saginaw Spirit as a 15-year-old. Over the next three seasons, the slick center lived up to the enormous hype, winning a championship and a scoring title.
Next Friday, if the New York Islanders don’t select Misa first overall in the NHL Draft – there’s a belief they’ll take Erie Otters defenseman Matthew Schaefer – the San Jose Sharks could grab him with the second pick.
He will almost certainly be long gone when the Sabres pick ninth.
Misa, 18, produced night after night with the eyes of the junior hockey world fixed on him.
Some youngsters might’ve cracked under the pressure and burden of expectations. Instead, he developed into perhaps the Ontario Hockey League’s most dynamic star.
Misa, the eighth player to receive exceptional status, possesses special traits that complement his skill.
“He’s such a mature young man, so humble,” Saginaw general manager David Drinkill told the Times Herald. “I tell everybody how humble he is, and that’s what, I think, makes him great. I think deep down he has, obviously, like, a burning desire, a swagger, but he doesn’t show it. He’s one of the guys. He doesn’t want the attention to be on him. It’s about the team.
“But to watch him go through it, and watch the pressure that he’s under, especially at 15, everywhere we go, there’s media requests, there’s autograph requests, pictures. Like, there’s a lot of attention brought on (him). … Seeing what he was under and the scrutiny, he really just kind of rose above it”.
Misa said simply “focusing on the hockey” and “kind of ignoring all the outside noise” helped him handle the constant attention.
“Working on my craft day in and day out,” he said June 7 following fitness testing at the NHL Scouting Combine in LECOM Harborcenter. “That’s really how I went about dealing with the pressure and stuff over the last couple of years.”
Early in his career, that pressure fell on some of his other teammates. He sometimes played a depth role on two loaded Saginaw teams, often skating as a winger instead of as a center, his natural position.
It paid off, however, as the Spirit won the Memorial Cup in 2024.
“It was just something I had to accept,” Misa said of his role. “That year was more about winning for us than anyone getting personal accolades and stuff like that.”
But in 2024-25, the Spirit followed through on its plan to shift the 6-foot-1, 185-pound Misa back center for his draft season and open up more ice for him.
He responded by scoring 62 goals and a league-high 134 points in 65 games and winning the OHL Most Outstanding Player award.
“The first thing to jump off the page for people that watch him play is skating, his speed, his ability to get up the top speed in a short amount of time, like, his acceleration and power,” Drinkill said.
The Spirit named him an alternate captain prior to the season and the youngest captain in franchise history in January after Drinkill traded Ethan Hay.
“When he speaks, everybody listens, everybody follows Michael,” Drinkill said. “When he wants to go anywhere, everybody wants to know where Michael’s going, right? He’s a very, very popular player in the dressing room because of the type of person he is.”
Drinkill said he knew Misa would be a strong captain. Still, he said “how great a captain he was at such a young age” surprised him.
“He really surpassed my expectations in a good way,” he said. “… He really embraced the role.”
