Have pads, willing to travel. A hockey journey that started in the nation’s capital when he was just learning to walk, took Matthew Camilleri to guard the crease everywhere from Massachusetts to Northern Ontario, with dozens of whistle stops in between, and the rewards hockey has given the goaltender keep on giving
By – David McPherson
Cambridge, ON – “I’m grateful for all of the opportunities and memories the OHA has provided me,” Matthew says. “I am also proud of myself that I never gave up. It helped that I always had a great support team behind me—from my parents to my friends—who kept pushing me to play.”
Camilleri started to play organized hockey in elementary school when he lived in Orleans, Ontario, an Ottawa suburb in the city’s east end. He was a forward before discovering, at age seven, the joy of being the last line of defence. “A guy on my street, who played travel hockey, and was a goalie, let me play road hockey with the older kids.and he gave me my first set of road hockey goalie gear.”
From the moment Matthew strapped on the pads and made his first save, he fell in love with this new position and made the switch to goaltender. “Much to the chagrin of my parents,” he says. “I’m sure I gave them both a couple of early gray hairs during years when they shouldn’t have been losing their colour!”
The Journey Begins
When Camilleri was eight, his family moved from Ottawa to Newmarket; that’s when he started his hockey journey as a goalie. At first, switching positions had its share of challenges, but his ability to skate well helped with this transition.
“You hear a lot of people at a high level talk about what is important for goalies, especially nowadays, and it’s that they have to be strong skaters,” Matthew says. “Skating was always my strongest skill. I wasn’t a big kid, so I always had to make up for my size by being a good skater. As I transitioned to goalie, that became even more important as I was pretty small for the position—about five-foot three—until I had a growth spurt in my late teens.”
Camilleri’s parents were athletic—his dad played football at the University of Western and his mom was a pretty good lacrosse player in her youth—so, with athleticism in his DNA, it was natural he got involved in organized sports and excelled. The goalie credits his parents’ dedication, commitment and support of his hockey dreams for the role they played in all of the incredible experiences hockey gave him along the way. In Matthew’s first year playing goal, he made the AA Newmarket Redmen. The following year, he moved up a level, playing on Brampton’s AAA team.
Boston Bound
After that one season playing AAA, where he gained invaluable experience, it was back to AA and the GTHL for the next four years, playing with the U16 Toronto Royals where Matthew further fine-tuned his prowess between the pipes. The summer he turned sixteen, the goaltender joined a travel team that competed in The Chowder Cup—a long-running, prestigious tournament in Boston, Massachusetts.
As a result of his performance in this tournament, a Boston AAA team recruited Matthew. That fall, the teenager packed his bags, said goodbye to his family and friends, and moved to New England to continue pursuit of his hockey dreams.
“That was a really big transition,” Camilleri recalls. “What made it easier is that I lived with a fantastic family. They were just hard-working, blue-collar folks. That was such a great learning experience; it allowed me to grow up a lot—something I needed at that age. More than just getting a chance to play hockey at a higher level, that stint in Boston was about my development and maturation as a young man.”
Matthew’s Boston stay was short-lived. Halfway through the season, the team basically folded following too many players deciding to join their high school hockey team instead of play AAA. Left to find another place to play, Camilleri landed in Ohio to finish that season.
Following that year’s sojourn, Matthew was at a career crossroads. “I asked myself, ‘Do I want to try to play AAA back in Canada or do I want to return to the United States?” As he mulled over this decision, he kept in shape skating with a local team back in Ontario.
Halfway through the 2012-13 Junior C season, Matthew, the Hanover Barons called. “I played one game with the Barons and was a little bit over my head at that time,” he recalls. “I was about five-foot-five, and 120 pounds soaking wet; suddenly, I went from playing against 15-year-olds to playing against 21 year-olds. That was a big jump just from the quality of shots and the intensity of the games … I’ll never forget that opportunity.
“I still remember that first night walking into the team dressing room,” Camilleri continues. “It was the first time I walked into a room that had big, nice stalls for each player, a trainer’s room and a skate sharpener. For a kid who grew up playing mostly AA hockey, who was undersized and never even considered as a potential OHL draft pick, it was just a really cool experience.”
Unfortunately, once again, this experience was brief. Camilleri finished the season with the Schomberg Cougars. Stints with the Midland Flyers and the Pelham Pirates followed in the 2014-2015 season, before Mattherw got the biggest break of his hockey career.
The goaltender had set a goal of making a top-end Junior B team, or possibly getting a chance to try out for a Junior A squad and he worked hard in the offseason playing in the summer league at Brampton’s Powerade Center (now CAA Centre). Camilleri made an impression and was invited to join an all-star squad that travelled to Europe for a series of exhibition games, in Italy, Germany and Austria against some top-tier teams. After this European experience, the coach of the team—who was the bench boss of the OJHL’s Toronto Junior Canadiens—invited the netminder to the Junior A squad’s training camp.
“I ended up having a really great camp and played well in a few exhibition games, so they signed me for the 2015-2016 season,” Matthew says. The goalie had a great first two games—a 1.85 GAA and a .926 save percentage with one win and one tie—but then a goaltender got sent down from Kingston and Camilleri’s partner in net, who had been with the Canadiens for four years, got the nod, leaving him the odd man out.
“When I was a kid, growing up in Newmarket, we lived just down the street from the arena where the Newmarket Hurricanes played,” Matthew recalls. “My dad and I walked together to many of the games, so growing up, the thought of playing in that league, that was my NHL, so when I signed with the Junior Canadiens, I had reached that goal, and I almost didn’t know what to do next. It was like, ‘I’m here, I did it,’ and I just wanted to stay in that league and play as long as possible. My dad definitely shared that moment with me … there were a couple of fist pumps and hugs in the car afterwards.”
Unfortunately, that moment was also short-lived and it ended abruptly. Matthew next took a backup goalie role with the Stouffville Spirit to finish that season before his next stop: the Iroquois Falls Eskimos in the Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League. This short stint was marked by too much idle off-ice time with not much to do combined with 10-hour bus trips since the Eskimos played teams as far away as Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
Final Stop: From a Gryphon to a Gryphin
When the Eskimos season ended, Matthew received a call from a scout inviting him to join the University of Guelph Gryphons. He enrolled in classes at the university and jumped at this chance to be part of such a respected hockey program. But again, the goaltender became the odd man out when it came to starting and manning the crease.
“My goalie partner in my freshman year was Scott Stajcer, a draft pick of the New York Rangers, and the other goalie was Keith Hamilton.That first year was another great learning experience.”
Camilleri entered his second year with the Gryphons hoping to get more ice time, but during the off-season the team had brought in some transfers from a couple of Division 1 schools, along with another former OHL goalie, so the writing was on the wall that maybe his hockey dream of playing professional was done.
Matthew never graduated from the University of Guelph. He planned to finish his BA in English degree, but an offer for a full-time job from Gertex Solutions was too good to pass up and he’s now been working at the company for seven years in a series of progressive positions.
“It was not something I was expecting to do, but it kind of took the opportunity that they offered me, and unlike my hockey career, I’ve stuck here for quite a while,” Matthew says.
Matthew is engaged to be married this coming August, and he works full-time as an account director with Gertex Solutions—a packaging solutions advisor—but hockey is still an integral part of his life. After putting on the goalie gear for the following Whitby Dunlops, the Flamborough Ducks, the Hamilton Steelhawks, and the Brampton Buccaneers, for the last three years, the 30-year-old has stood guard in the crease a few days a week with the Senior AAA Wentworth Gryphins.
Matthew hopes—just like his current job—that his time with the Gryfins will last for a while. With Camilleri in goal, the Gryfins captured the Allan Cup in 2025. “That was definitely my number one hockey memory,” he says. “Our organization is first-class. The owner, Rod Millard, is one of those human beings that you don’t come across too often. He is a completely selfless person who just wants to make the experience he is putting on to be the best experience that it possibly can be … just the way he takes care of all the players with things like catered meals after our games and practices.
“We even have our own team clubhouse where we hang out. When we won the Allan Cup, the rings that they got for us basically look like Super Bowl rings from the early 2000s.”
In Week 13 of the 2025-26 ACHL season, Camilleri was named the Goalie of the Week thanks to a win in his team’s lone game in which he allowed just two goals, stopping 45 shots, for his fourth victory of the season.
“After playing for many different teams over the last 15 years I finally found my home in Wentworth,” Matthew concludes. “Winning an Allan Cup last year was the perfect way to cap my hockey career. Playing in this senior hockey league has been for me, and for so many of my teammates, such an amazing experience. It’s given a lot of us the chance to finish our careers on our own terms and restore our love for the game while still playing a high level of hockey filled with guys who have played in professional and junior leagues from around the world. The chance to share stories together after games has made for memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life.”
About the Ontario Hockey Association
The Ontario Hockey Association (OHA) was founded on November 27, 1890, and is the governing body for the majority of Junior and Senior hockey in the Province of Ontario. It is comprised of three Junior hockey leagues and two Senior hockey leagues: Junior A – Ontario Junior Hockey League; Junior B – Greater Ontario Hockey League; Junior C – Provincial Junior Hockey League, Senior –Allan Cup Hockey (AAA) and Ontario Elite Hockey League (AA). For the 2025-2026 season, these five leagues encompass 132 teams. 3100 players, and about 6,000 games each hockey season. The majority of our players are 16 to 21 years of age.
The objectives of the OHA are to foster and encourage the sport of amateur hockey, to conduct competition in the various categories established, to determine teams for entry into the inter-branch competitions that may be provided by Hockey Canada, and to provide for the affiliation of other hockey organizations.
The OHA provides administrative resources, coordinates programs, services and events for hockey participants and provides support to various Development Programs for coaches, officials, trainers and players, Safety and Risk Management Issues and offers resources for Harassment and Abuse education.
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For more information or to set up an interview, please contact:
Chris McCleary
General Manager, Operations & Marketing
Ontario Hockey Association
