It’s not very often that you see three names from one team leading a league in scoring but as of Thursday morning, that was the case in the Ontario Hockey League.
Three Kitchener Rangers — Hunter Brzustewicz, Adrian Misaljevic and Carson Rehkopf — were tied for the league lead in scoring with 16 points apiece. (Mississauga Steelheads’ Luka Misa passed the trio on Thursday night.)
Misaljevic and Rehkopf have each tallied nine goals, allowing them to both sit atop the goal scoring leaderboard.
One might have expected to see Brzustewicz and Rehkopf’s names atop the list as the pair were both selected in last summer’s NHL entry draft but Misaljevic is more of an anomaly.
Not only did he go undrafted in the NHL draft two years ago, but he was also signed by the Rangers as an undrafted free agent in 2021.
Misaljevic, who hails from Woodbridge, Ont., was playing for the Niagara Falls Canucks, who were in the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League back then.
His intentions were to move from there to a bigger Junior A club in hopes of getting a college scholarship.
“I started playing pretty well and I was getting quite a bit of notice,” he told Global News. “My agent was talking to some OHL teams and he said OHL could be an option.”
He would appear in 31 games that winter after signing on with the Rangers, scoring three goals and setting up six others along the way.
The late bloomer was eligible for the NHL draft that summer but it did not come as a shock to anyone that his name was not called.
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“I wasn’t expecting it because we had a really strong team and I didn’t get a lot of minutes,” Misaljevic said.
A year ago, the Rangers forward saw more ice time as he played in 47 games, scoring four goals while assisting on seven others, but it was a deep team, as many veterans were brought in to make a playoff push.
“We did try going for it last year and we made a bunch of trades to get the top guys,” he said.
But a new year has brought about plenty of change for the Rangers. At least 10 players have moved on, with a number either playing professionally or having moved on to play for Canadian universities.
Many expected the Rangers to be in rebuild mode this season, giving younger players an opportunity to develop.
“It was more of like a rebuild year,” Misaljevic said of expectations heading into the season. “And the younger guys that didn’t get an opportunity last year would get an opportunity this year.”
There were plenty of question marks about how the team’s top-line players would perform with few, including him, expecting Misaljevic to have the type of season he has had thus far.
“I don’t really like to doubt myself, but I didn’t think I was going to start off like this hot,” he said.
“I trained hard in the summer and I worked really hard on stuff, but I didn’t think I was going to start off this hot for the season. Hopefully, I can continue it for the rest of the season.”
That hot start has caught the eye of many, bringing the spotlight onto the Rangers forward, although he is somewhat used to it as he has also been acting and modelling from a young age.
His mom began to put him into commercials and print ads as a youngster, looking to sock away a few bucks for when he got older.
“I did some car commercials, some Leon’s commercials,” he explained. “I did more of the modelling with Sears, Winners and I modelled for Roots.”
He said he was more interested in acting and modelling when he was between the ages of eight and 13, but he has kept it up, with his younger brother and sister following in his footsteps.
“My sister is getting pretty big into acting now,” he said. “She’s probably been in five Christmas movies and a horror film. So she’s been she’s been doing pretty well for herself in the acting.”
Both he and his sister are listed on IMDB, with his younger sister Maya’s most recent project being Atom Egoyan’s latest film Seven Veils. Last year, she appeared as Young Starlight in the hit Amazon show The Boys.
Meanwhile, Misaljevic also has a couple of credits to his name, including a Canadian independent film released in 2022 called I Like Movies.
“I still have an agent but my agent knows I play in the OHL so I can’t do any modelling and acting during the season,” the Rangers forward noted.
While Misaljevic is hoping his future lies on the ice, he doesn’t think his future will lie on stage and screen.
“I would prefer, obviously, to play to play pro hockey,” the 19-year-old said.
“That’s the main goal. I don’t know if I really see myself acting in the future, to be honest.”
If Misaljevic keeps scoring at the pace he is for the Rangers, he will probably reach his goal on some level.
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