Judging on announced recruiting classes and rumoured transfers, it appears as though the OUA East will be stronger (and more top-heavy) than the West again in 2015-16.
Carleton - McGill - UQTR just look stronger than the OUA West's top tier. By the same token, there are no RMCs or Concordias at the bottom of the West.
Were they (the top teams) stronger last year too? It certainly felt that way throughout much of the year, but here are the results of the "Big 3" in the OUA West vs. the "Big 3" of the OUA East.
Windsor 1-2
McGill
Western 3-0 McGill
Western 5-1 UQTR
Western 2-5
Carleton
Waterloo 2-1 McGill
Waterloo 3-2 UQTR
Waterloo 4-2 Carleton
OUA Bronze:
Windsor 2-1 McGill
Regular season results show the OUA West's top 3 teams having a 5-2 record against McGill, UQTR and Carleton. (Total results are 6-2 including the OUA Bronze).
Going into the playoffs, I thought it would be different - especially with Western and Waterloo going out early. The Queen's Cup game featured Guelph (which almost did not qualify for the playoffs) against UQTR. You had posted that you could not imagine Guelph keeping up with UQTR. I tended to agree and thought UQTR would have a fairly simple victory. They didn't, with Guelph having a commanding 4-0 victory.
Then McGill, played against Windsor, a fairly average team that has played two straight seasons perfecting the art of winning 1 and 2 goal games (often with an empty netter) by playing a strong system. I imagined Windsor would be in tough and McGill would skate to victory. They didn't - and Windsor took the OUA Bronze.
Finally, in the National Bronze Medal game, I thought UQTR, playing this time on neutral ice against Guelph would have their revenge. But again, they didn't - Guelph winning in overtime.
The oddest thing about this wasn't that the OUA West was strong last year - it wasn't. It was the first year since I had been following (since around 2007) that the OUA East won against the West in cross over games in aggregate. Even the top teams like Waterloo, Windsor and Western all had faults. Waterloo had another great recruiting year, but went through periods where they would lose up to 5 games in a row to mediocre teams like York, Toronto and Nipissing. Windsor was predictably solid - a great team at winning as noted above, but they did so with a 4 line, up tempo/puck possession pace that is consistently just good enough to beat most of the OUA teams on a night in, night out basis, but not really that staggering. Finally, Western was a team that has always been built with great former OHL defencemen and lots of former 50-60 point CHL guys who can score at an elite level. Last year they had more losses of those types (up front) than recruits, and as a result, had to play a style much more similar to Windsor to grind out wins as opposed to outclassing the rest of the OUA West.
Despite this, McGill/Carleton/UQTR couldn't seem to win the big games. They were excellent at beating up the weaker OUA teams (in both conferences) but struggled against very vulnerable OUA West "Elite" teams.
This was odd, as in my opinion, teams like 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 McGill would have run through this year's OUA West.
Based on just strength of projected returning players, I imagine these 3 teams to have better inter conference and post season records against this year's top OUA West teams - but stranger things have happened.