His junior head coach and general manager, his skills coach and his minor hockey coach all use the same three names.
Corey Perry. Brady Tkachuk. Matthew Tkachuk.
That’s what you’re getting, they’ll tell you — and are telling NHL teams — in Porter Martone.
James Richmond, his head coach and general manager with the Brampton Steelheads, sees Perry in particular — and not, he says, just because both have worn No. 94.
“That’s Corey Perry” was the first thought he had when he watched Martone all the way back in minor hockey.
“When I’ve watched Corey Perry I say, ‘Man that guy is just a dog and he’s super skilled,’” Richmond said. “(Martone’s) around the puck all the time and he’s unbelievable with the puck on his stick, and he gets under the skin of people on the other team, and he can score and he can pass and he’s ultra-ultra-competitive.”
Shortly after arriving at Barrie’s Sadlon Center ahead of a recent game against the Colts, Martone, dressed in a checkered suit, said those names suited him just fine.
“That’s who I am,” he said of modelling his game after Perry and the Tkachuk brothers. “I feel like I’m a big, powerful forward who sees the ice very well, can make plays and can score. But I like to be a hard player to play against. I like to get underneath the other team’s skin and just make an influence on the game every night and be a big player in big moments.”
A little more than two hours later, Martone did just that in a tie game, scoring once and setting up another on the same shift. A couple of shifts later, he scored again to make it 3-0 for his second goal and third point of the period. Early in the third period, he got into it with Gabriel Eliasson, the toughest player in the OHL, the two exchanging gloves to the face for offsetting roughing minors.
A day later, an NHL scout texted this: “How good was Martone last night!!”
Nights like that have turned Martone, a 6-foot-2.75, 208-pound winger, into a front-runner to go in the top two or three picks in the 2025 NHL Draft.
If he keeps having them — and everyone who knows him believes he will — they might just make him a front-runner for the No. 1 pick, too.
Porter Martone isn’t afraid to play hard with or without the puck. (Terry Wilson / OHL Images)
The way Daniel Sisca’s story goes, it started with a call from his old agent, Quartexx’s Paul Capizzano.
“Hey, listen, I’ve got one of the top players in the province, he’s from Peterborough, his name’s Porter Martone, he’s a big right-shot,” Capizzano told Sisca, then the head coach of the Toronto Jr. Canadiens’ U16 AAA team.
He wasn’t looking for a player and because nobody had played the season prior in 2020-2021, he hadn’t heard of Martone either. His team was already loaded with its fair share of the top players in the province, too, with the dynamic duo of Michael Hage and Jacob Battaglia up front, a blue line that featured Henry Mews and Anthony Cristoforo, and another top prospect, Jack Van Volsen, set to join them. Martone was young, too, an October 2006 who was an NHL draft class behind those guys.
But he trusted Capizzano; he’d played against Martone’s dad, Mike, a former captain with the Petes and fourth-round pick of the Sabres, during their playing days; and he knew how big, strong and tough Mike was. And so he took Capizzano’s word and had Martone out to a skills session to give him a look.
Immediately, he could see Martone’s passion for the game and how much he loved being on the ice. By the end of the skate, he’d seen the skill, too.
And so he added him to the team as well.
Martone hasn’t looked back since. That season, on what was supposed to be the second line with Van Volsen and Antonio Tersigni, they challenged Hage and Battaglia, in essence becoming a second first line. Martone even set up a group chat with the three of them to draw up different faceoff plays they wanted to run.
“(Hage and Battaglia) were like, ‘Well alright, Porter’s a hell of a hockey player and now we have to elevate our game,’” Sisca described. “It was ‘You guys went out and scored and now we’re going to go out and score and if you score again then we’re going to score again.’ And they were split on the power play too, where I basically said ‘Alright, you guys have a minute and you guys have a minute, it’s a healthy competition, let’s see who can do it.’ And they really fed off of each other. There was no jealousy.”
After Martone and Van Volsen’s line carried the Jr. Canadiens in the early part of that minor midget year, the former became a source of conversation at rinks.
“As the year went on, everyone was like ‘Where’d he play?’ And then as the games started passing by everyone was like ‘Woah, this guy’s a legit stud,’” Sisca said. “He could bring everything. He could penalty kill, he could play the power play bumper, he could play the half-wall (which he’s doing now in the OHL), he could be a net-front guy and score garbage goals, he could score highlight-reel goals. Porter just brings the full package. He can adapt and be a third-line power forward or a first-liner who can score 100 points. He’ll fight, he’ll block shots, he’s not just a one-dimensional player who only thinks about skill — he’ll do whatever it takes to help the team win and help himself develop.”
That year, he did score 100 points, too. To be exact, 104 in 53 games.
When Sisca looks back on that team, which won the GTHL championship and lost in the OHL Cup final (after Martone scored seven goals and 15 points in seven games), his most memorable moment is a five-on-three goal Martone scored against the Mississauga Senators at the Silver Stick where he gave the Jr. Canadiens the late lead and celebrated the full 200 feet of the ice until he found the parent group behind the net.
At year’s end, that Jr. Canadiens team had five players selected in the first round of the 2022 OHL draft. Martone was the first off the board, the Sarnia Sting taking him with the fifth pick (though Hage, who went ninth to the Kitchener Rangers, may have gone higher had he not been considering the college route).
That summer, he moved to Toronto five days a week, returning home to Peterborough on the weekends, so he could skate with skills coach Leland De Langley and work out with strength coach Andy O’Brien and his team at Junxion Performance.
Though the Sting traded him at the deadline of his rookie year as part of a blockbuster move to acquire then-Mississauga Steelheads captain and Blackhawks draft pick Ethan Del Mastro as they chased a championship (Sting general manager Dylan Seca calls the Martones “incredible people” and said the trade was “100 percent Sarnia-driven”), he has gone on to become the now-Brampton Steelheads captain himself.
That rookie year, he registered seven goals and 12 points as an alternate captain with Canada Red at U17 worlds, 22 points in 32 games with the Steelheads after the trade, was the youngest forward on Team Canada at U18 worlds (where he registered six points in seven games) and then represented Canada for a third time in a season at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup, winning his first gold medal with five points in five games and again wearing a letter.
Last season, he then led the Steelheads in goals with 33 and finished second on the team in scoring with 71 points in 60 games before appearing in his second U18 worlds, this time captaining Team Canada to his second gold medal with 17 points in seven games (good for the tournament All-Star team). Before his draft year even began, he was invited to the World Junior Summer Showcase, where he was also again Canada’s youngest forward.
This season, his third in the OHL, he got off to one of the hottest starts in the CHL, registering 12 goals and 25 points in his first 11 games.
It followed his first summer spent skating with De Langley’s pro group, a decision De Langley made after all of the players from that group said, “No, this kid could really benefit from being out here.”
Asked about how Martone fit into those skates, De Langley said there were times in small area games or drills where he’d catch himself saying “Wow” or “What the hell did I just see there?”
It didn’t matter whether he was out against a big defenseman like Jamie Oleksiak or forwards like Sam Bennett, Andrew Mangiapane and Barrett Hayton, either. Martone wanted to prove to them what he was capable of.
“He’s definitely not timid,” De Langley said, chuckling. “(Martone) worries about himself. There’s just no complacency, which I absolutely love and which I know the guys respect because it’s not often that the junior guys get to skate with the pro guys all summer. It’s every day and it’s cliche to say but he really does embody that with his maturity and always wanting to put in that extra little bit of work. I’ve just been really happy with that because the talent’s there but it can go wasted sometimes and he doesn’t waste it.”
Each summer when he returns for their skates, De Langley has noticed a bigger and stronger Martone, filling out his nearly 6-foot-3 frame to the point he looks more like a professional than a teenager.
His commitment off the ice has shown in his constant improvement on it, too.
“When I first saw him the first summer, you knew that there were so many unique skills and talents that he possesses with his unbelievable shot. He uses his frame really well. And for me he has just developed an overall maturity and understanding of how good he is and the potential and ceiling that’s there for him,” De Langley said. “You don’t expect it from a guy with that big frame to have the nice soft touch that he does and control things in tight to make things happen. The sky really is the limit.”
De Langley said he wouldn’t even be surprised if Martone wears an ‘A’ in the NHL within 3-5 years because of the combination of his work ethic, personality and game.
“Even just his style of play, yes he’s extremely offensive and has quite the gift in that sense, but he just plays with the jam and bite that you love. (He’s) always around it and always engaged. And those types of players, they bring people up. That’s what I see — a kid that works, that comes prepared, engaged, always has a good attitude, those things that define leaders. That’s just what he embodies. He’s just a phenomenal, phenomenal kid.”
Porter Martone’s commitment off the ice has shown in his constant improvement on it. (Steven Ellis / Daily Faceoff)
What sets Martone apart, Richmond says, is that there isn’t one single thing he has had to work on — or that has taken off — in his development.
“Truthfully,” he said when asked about where the development in Martone’s game has come in the last three seasons, “he has just gotten older. His legs are starting to get thicker, his butt is getting bigger, the back is getting bigger, so now things are starting to happen. We didn’t have a chance to draft him because he was going to be well gone before we picked but really since he has come over he has just gone up, and up, and up.”
He’s also a hockey geek in an age where others aren’t.
“A lot of guys don’t know players,” Richmond said. “He knows all the guys. He knows guys on the fourth lines, he knows coaches, he knows how the teams are doing, he follows them. He doesn’t just watch highlights. And that’s been a bit of an issue with guys wanting to put on a show because they see what gets put on YouTube, but that’s not really going to win you hockey games at the end of the day. He’s a student of the game.”
Martone says that comes from his parents, who are both now teachers (Mike’s a high school teacher and his mom, Angela, is an elementary school teacher). But it also comes from growing up in what he calls a “hockey lifestyle.” He played competitive lacrosse until COVID when he was 15 and he had to choose a sport, but it was always going to be hockey. His parents met when Mike played in Peterborough and raised a hockey family after Mike attended teacher’s college following his playing career. His sister plays U18 AA and hopes to play junior hockey next year with a goal of getting a Division I NCAA scholarship.
Though his parents were always hard on him and his sister about getting good grades, Thursday nights at the Peterborough Memorial Centre watching the Petes growing up and stories from his dad about the best years of his life in junior hockey had him dreaming about playing in the OHL as a kid.
Now, like his dad before him, he’s a captain in the league. He’s also chasing an OHL title with a contending Steelheads team, a roster spot with Canada at the world juniors, a Memorial Cup and a place at the top of the draft.
Richmond said the players decided the captaincy piece of the equation, not him.
“There’s older guys on our team but when you come to the rink and come to the room, it’s easy to see that it’s Porter’s team. He might not be (the) loudest guy or the oldest guy but it’s his team, so he’s the captain. Guys gravitate towards him off the ice. He’s great to deal with for coaches, he’s open to learning and he wants to add to his game so he’s the choice,” Richmond said plainly.
Asked to put this year and all that comes with it into context, Martone just shook his head.
“This is pretty cool, right?” he said. “Just being acknowledged as the captain is big. I’m excited to lead this group. We’re all expecting to go on a deep run this year. It’s your NHL draft year. This is the year you dream of since you’re a kid. You want to come out every night and impress the people in the stands that are watching. But I also think that what will impress them is team success, and if we continue to keep on winning then that will lead to individual success and more eyes on everyone in this room.”
So far, that’s exactly what he’s done.
(Top photo: Charles Warburton / Brampton Steelheads)
