While traveling on the LA Kings charter at night after a game, I ran out of battery juice because of a faulty connection at my seat and preferred to continue working on the plane rather than spend an extra hour at the charter terminal on arrival at 2 a.m. We spent enough time on planes that I learned about an inconspicuous outlet affixed to the bottom of emergency exit doors at the rear galley on most commercial airliners, so I tiptoed through the dark aisle towards the back of the plane while trying not to make eye contact with passengers only two hours removed from competing in an NHL game.
This was an unorthodox way to charge up, but I was more wary of the looks I might get from the players for invading their designated space rather than any resistance from our wonderful flight attendants.
FAA rules are only partially enforced on team charters. No one stowed electronics during takeoff or landing, nor did the pilots give instructions to do so. I raced to publish post-game stories during the plane’s takeoff roll using a WiFi card and found that it usually worked through about 5,000 feet. Trainers walked up and down the plane quickly after it was airborne to issue ice bags and share casualty reports with the coaches. An assistant coach once tried to convince a pilot not to stop to refuel while returning home from a trip because it would cut into the following day’s schedule. And, on this charter, I hoped to refill the battery using the emergency exit while completing my stories from a rear jump seat.
The hierarchy of NHL charter seating arrangements
I was proud of this plan. Think of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes and his sinister, plotting smile. But I still had to make it past the players with haste, a process slowed by lavatory traffic adjacent to where Matt Greene sat quietly. “You can’t be here, Rosey,” he said.
That’s all it took. Time to check my privilege. Rather than digging in with a brief rebuttal – I’m actually headed to the rear of the plane! Behind you guys! – I knew to listen to Greene, who was polite while reaffirming his recommendation. Anyone working for an NHL team who isn’t a player, coach or eminently tied to the on-ice success knows to treat those who are tied to it like they are CEOs. So, back to my seat.
The following season, we were upgraded to a 757 and the media was relocated to the back, marking the only span in hockey I can remember sitting farther back than the players.
Tenured players occupy the back seats, and if you’re not part of hockey operations staff, the only reason you should be in the back of the plane or bus is to use the lavatory. (And, if a visit to the lavatory on the Silvertips bus resulted in a certain ending, you were subjected to a $50 fine, payable in kangaroo court.)
Seniority rules
These travel principals are universal. Among the players, experience determines seating location, and those who’ve accrued miles have earned the choice seats in planes, buses, Ubers, trains, ferries, airboats. An inordinate amount of time is spent in transit.
“When you get to the hotel elevator, usually the older guys are allowed to go on first,” Christian Ehrhoff told me. “I remember in the past a young guy wasn’t aware of that, and guys made him aware pretty quickly, and then you move on. That’s just the way it works in sports or in hockey.” It didn’t matter Ehrhoff hadn’t logged a game when he arrived in Los Angeles – his 741-game tenure afforded him platinum status. Among the perks: one of a limited number of parking spots at the team’s practice facility, a preferential seat on the plane, and a row near the back of the bus. “Usually that’s what happens – guys are aware of how many games somebody has played, and that’s the respect you get,” he said.
Rarely in any league are these ground rules stretched, though while I worked for the Silvertips, there was one confident usurper. Kyle Beach, a Chicago first round pick in 2008 whose precociousness and dynamite talent drew heavy attention and regular controversy at the time, joined the team in Kelowna as a 15-year-old call-up, walked to the back of the bus, and yelled up front, “load the bus, rookies!” It is easy for those who recall Kyle fondly – as I certainly do – to imagine the floppy-haired teenager’s cheek-to-cheek grin. This was probably something he’d planned days in advance.
Riding the bus in the WHL circuit
But that was a rogue episode in a league where a massive amount of time is spent on the bus. College teams, European teams, American junior teams, and major junior teams in the OHL and QMJHL did not log the same hours we did. In the O, there were 11 teams within a two-hour drive of Toronto. In the Dub, teams were constellated as far south as Brandon, Manitoba, as far north as Prince George, British Columbia – a smelt factory town whose latitude lies just below Alaska’s southernmost point – and, since 2019, as far east as Winnipeg.
Inside the Everett Silvertips team bus during a road trip.
But air travel is prohibited until the WHL championship (at which point the two teams charter a plane together) out of the necessity of competitive balance. There are some truly small markets in the Dub, like Swift Current, Prince Albert, and, previously, Cranbrook, B.C., whose clubs wouldn’t be able to compete fairly if the deeper-pocketed Calgary Hitmen or Portland Winterhawks decided they’d prefer to fly to the league’s outer reaches rather than take the bus.
And so we spent weeks upon weeks criss-crossing the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada, climbing the Snoqualmie Pass, putting chains on, removing the chains, and descending into Eastern Washington. After the game, the driver, often on a recommendation from someone up front – “Hey, Tom, why don’t you give’r a little toot, eh?” – would honk twice when departing the rink after a win, and we’d turn the bus around and again hurl towards the North Cascades, chaining up, de-chaining, and pulling back into the parking lot at Broadway and Hewitt in the wee hours.
WHL teams log serious miles
Everett and Seattle are in desirable locations, league-wide. One league historian and archivist, Alan Caldwell, calculated each team’s annual mileage, and in the years in which we traveled to the Central Division rather than the East Division, we spent the fewest miles on the bus of any WHL team. Kent, Washington, home of the Thunderbirds, was 45 minutes away on the weekends, which was when we usually played them.
Reaching Vancouver and Chilliwack took two hours and border traffic. (Chilliwack has since relocated to Victoria, adding a ferry crossing into team logistics.) Tri-City was three and a half hours away, Spokane between four and five. A few times a year, usually on nights or mornings returning from the Eastern Conference, or Prince George, or when the snow was particularly heavy, we’d spend the entire night on the bus. Bodies are splayed on the aisles, across seats, forming human bridges in the row across and supine pyramids with legs angled towards the ceiling amidst two-seat quarters. There are many wonderful memories of the brotherhood forged by enduring such tight spaces, but 6-foot-4 Campbell Elynuik shifting in his seat and accidentally (I hope) kicking me in the face in the middle of the night on the Crowsnest Highway was not one of them.
Though rides can be excruciatingly long, WHL teams encounter some stunning scenery.
The longest drive we endured was from Prince Albert to Everett, a 24-hour marathon that spanned three time zones, a spectral, pre-dawn breakfast in Banff we sleepwalked through, and a lot of episodes of Trailer Park Boys. We left after the game in central Saskatchewan and arrived in Everett at 9:00 p.m. the next night. The five-hour haul from Kamloops down to sea level was the home stretch.
Other teams have it considerably worse. Prince George is five hours from Kamloops, the closest team, by way of the two-lane, wildlife-adjacent Cariboo Highway. Brandon’s closest neighbor is Regina, four and a half hours away. We drove through blizzards, icy highways, the Rocky Mountains, remote border outposts and ski towns, and were afforded for hours at a time incredible views of North Cascade, Rocky and Selkirk massifs.
There are lovely towns in Quebec, and beautiful lake regions encircling Toronto, one of North America’s great cities, but the Dub is the only major junior league whose earthen tapestry was so enchantingly distracting and a core characteristic of the collective experience. (As long as you were in the Western Conference.)
Bad movies or bust
When not looking out the window, the movies we watched were abjectly terrible. I’m not sure if we watched one good movie in four years other than Slap Shot. There was more refinement in the AHL. When we’d traveled with the Manchester Monarchs for the 2015 Calder Cup, we watched Whiplash en route to Utica. This was a historic event: never before had such a good movie been appreciated by so many on a hockey bus. But when traveling with the youngs, we watched mostly trash. One movie, Never Back Down, was about rival high school kickboxers. When I tried to put on The Fifth Element, it was shut off before the end of the first scene and I lost all movie privileges for the rest of my Silvertips tenure. I would have been wise to think this out. Even this week, unsolicited, I was reminded of The Fifth Element Incident.
Certain out-of-the-way teams had sleeper coaches, and at this time, which was 2007 through 2011, one or two teams had WiFi connections. By 2011 we occasionally did, and it worked on par with 1994 dial-up. The time was spent sleeping, watching movies, binging TV shows and working as best one could without the Internet. It was different from the NHL, in which chartered planes were essentially just more rooms to do work in – narrow rooms that vibrated and yawed and had intermittent WiFi.
There were the nights we slept overnight on the bus, and those long, black journeys on a chilly coach go by slowly if you’re unable to drift off at your seat or on the floor. (After enough trips, I found DJ Shadow’s soothing Endtroducing was like drinking a glass of warm milk.)
Bus flu
It’s not a surprise that the flu absolutely wrecks WHL teams in the first half of the season and leads to an exhausting lifestyle for the 16 and 17-year-olds, who still attended school the next morning. By the second half of the season, we’d all built up such super-strong immune systems that we rarely needed more than a shot of Buckley’s to get past the sniffles or bus flu. (I am not an immunologist, nor am I sure if studies confirm this; feel free to ignore.) (Also, “Bus Flu” is not recognized by the American College of Physicians.)
These are all players who paid their dues – those who endured irregular sleep and meshing schoolwork with intense exertion and injury amidst the demanding, cacophonous directives that, like the 72-game schedule, also provided the most accurate portrayal of the professional circuit beyond. This is a badge of honor worn by those who came from the Dub. No one can tell me that the young men on major junior teams, almost all of whom are away from home for the first time and are required to be at school in the morning – regardless of when the bus pulled into Everett the previous night – aren’t mature. They just enjoy terrible movies.
(Part II coming soon…)
Jon Rosen, who lived at the corner of 45th and Burke in Wallingford, was the voice of the Everett Silvertips from 2007-11 before joining the LA Kings and FOX Sports West as a Rinkside Reporter and the LA Kings Insider. Covering the team’s 2012 and 2014 Stanley Cups digitally and on television, his reporting and play-by-play has also been seen on the NHL Network, NBC Sports and the Big Ten Network. This is an edited excerpt from his upcoming anthology of stories depicting his two decades in broadcasting and sports media.
It could be a game for the ages. Or, the Americans could get blown out of the water. Either way, it’s going to be a party for somebody. Let’s hope for the former, as Team USA faces the overwhelming tournament favorite, Team Canada, in Tuesday’s World Junior Championship (WJC) gold medal game.
Monday’s semifinals were a tale of two contests. In the early game, Russia—which opened the WJC with an impressive win over Team USA—was spanked 5-0 by the Canadians. That game even made the world’s best under-20 goaltender, Yaroslav Askarov (Nashville Predators prospect), look downright beatable. Team Canada coasted through the third period and never looked under duress.
In the late game, USA ultimately came out victorious over Finland in an intense contest that went down to the wire. After the US allowed the tying goal at 16:17 of the third period, Arthur Kaliyev (LAK) rifled the game winner with just over one minute remaining. It was an emotional game that took every American player giving just about everything to get past the pesky Finns, who nearly overcame their second consecutive two-goal deficit of the knockout stage.
Both teams will need to quickly reset as we turn our attention to the gold medal game, which will be played Tuesday between David Team USA and Goliath Team Canada at 6:30PM Pacific on NHL Network.
Team Canada Lives Up to Hype
On paper, Canada should probably win just about every WJC. Yet—by their standards—the Canadians had a bit of a down decade, earning three gold medals between 2010 and 2020, including last year’s championship. Another win tonight would prove that the dip in dominance was simply an anomaly.
In this WJC, Canada has lived up to its pre-tournament billing in every way. Despite its best player and captain, Kirby Dach (CHI), fracturing his wrist in an exhibition game and forcing him out of the competition, Team Canada has dominated every game it has played to this point. In fact, the star-studded squad has outscored its opponents 41-4 in six games, and netminder Devon Levi has allowed zero goals at even strength.
You read that right. Canada has not yet allowed an even-strength goal in this tournament.
Speaking of Levi, goaltending was perhaps the one area coming into the WJC in which Canada did not appear to hold an advantage over the field. Russia’s Askarov and USA’s Spencer Knight received the bulk of the ballyhoo, while our neighbors to the north questioned who would get the nod in their nation’s goal crease.
Levi—an unheralded seventh-round draft pick of the Florida Panthers—has answered any and all questions to this point. The Northeastern University freshman has stopped 120 of 124 shots through Monday’s semifinal, good for a .975 save percentage. Still, one could argue that he hasn’t been tested that intensely, as Canada has allowed few grade-A scoring chances.
Meanwhile, after losing the odds-on favorite for tournament MVP in Dach, Dylan Cozens (BUF) took the reins as the offensive leader and shined from the jump. Cozens—who has traded off wearing what was supposed to be Dach’s “C” with stud defenseman Bowen Byram (COL)—is tied for the WJC scoring lead with 16 points (8-8-16).
Connor McMichael (WAS), Quinton Byfield (LAK), Alex Newhook (COL), and Peyton Krebs (VGK) are other players that we at Sound Of Hockey have noticed as particularly outstanding on a roster full of potential future NHL superstars.
The Americans Are No Slouches
So if Cozens is tied for the tournament scoring lead, then who shares that honor with him? Why, it’s none other than USA’s Trevor Zegras (ANA), of course!
Zegras has been incredible for the Stars and Stripes, scoring from everywhere, setting up teammates, and finding ways to be dangerous just about every time he’s been on the ice. In all, Zegras has six goals and 10 assists, and if USA shocks the world Tuesday, he has all but secured the tournament MVP award.
Others that have wowed for the Americans have been Cam York (PHI), Matt Boldy (MIN), and Cole Caufield (MTL).
Local Pacific Northwest hockey fans have been clamoring to see Everett Silvertips goaltender Dustin Wolf (CGY) receive a real chance to show what he can do on this global stage. He frankly has been buried on the bench behind Knight, despite not giving up a goal in a game and a half during the preliminary round. USA head coach Nate Leaman has clearly hitched his wagon to Knight, though, and almost certainly will give the start to the 2019 first-round pick of the Panthers.
In fairness to Knight, he has played very well in this tournament, aside from a couple opening-game blunders against Russia that landed him on the bench. Knight boasts a .922 save percentage and was named one of USA’s three best players of the tournament following Monday’s semifinal.
But Do The Americans Actually Have a Chance?
It’s not quite USA versus USSR in the 1980 Winter Olympics, but Canada will be heavily favored on Tuesday. The US will have to play a close-to-perfect game and will still have to get some breaks to beat the Canadians.
So how can they actually do it? Most important for Team USA is that it wins the special teams battle. On Monday, the Americans took five penalties against Finland and relented two power play goals. They aren’t going to score much at five-on-five against Canada, but they do have the best power play in the tournament with Zegras, Kaliyev, and Boldy forming a truly elite forward unit. As a team, USA has scored at a 43 percent clip with the manpower advantage.
Drawing power plays while playing a clean game and receiving stellar goaltending from Knight is how the Americans can pull this off.
Still, it’s a huge long shot.
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at Sound Of Hockey and the host, producer, and editor of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is an inconsistent beer league goalie who believes that five players have to make a mistake before the puck gets to him. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFunBrown or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
Team Canada, the hockey powerhouse of the world, is a perpetual bet to bring a stacked roster to the World Junior Championship time after time.
This year is no exception.
Twenty first-rounders make up a roster with 24 drafted prospects in all — including a tournament-high seven in the Top 10 — for Team Canada in the 2021 WJC.
Here’s how Canada’s roster shakes out.
Forwards
Team Canada posted a photo of its line combinations for a practice on Dec. 18, and it included the No. 2 overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft on Canada’s fourth line.
OK, Quinton Byfield probably won’t be a fourth-liner for the entire tournament. But it’s a testament to how deep and talented Canada’s forward group is.
It starts with Kirby Dach, who was loaned by the Chicago Blackhawks to Canada for the tournament. Dach, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2019 NHL Draft, was playing on a national stage as recently as August.
Playing against Cole Caufield (USA forward and Canadiens prospect) and Vasili Podkolzin (Russia forward and Canucks prospect), as talented as they are, might just be a slight drop-off from playing against Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.
Byfield, Dach, Dylan Cozens (Sabres first-round pick), Connor McMichael (Capitals first-round pick) and Dawson Mercer (Devils first-rounder) round out Canada’s returners up front from last year’s tournament in the Czech Republic.
Notably, Canada has really strong depth at center with players like Dach, Byfield, and Cozens highlighting the roster. It will allow guys like Peyton Krebs, a Golden Knights prospect and a former Winnipeg Ice star, and Connor Zary, a Flames first-rounder and a Kamloops Blazer, to move to the wings.
Defensemen
Canada’s options on the blueline are also strong.
Bowen Byram, the No. 4 overall pick by the Colorado Avalanche in the 2019 NHL Draft, headlines the group. The former Vancouver Giants star will likely link up with Jamie Drysdale, the No. 6 overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft by the Anaheim Ducks, as Canada’s top pairing.
Both Byram and Drysdale are also expected to be primary fixtures on Canada’s power play.
Canada also features two shutdown defensemen from the Western Hockey League in Prince Albert’s Kaiden Guhle (No. 16 overall to Montreal in 2020) and the Brandon Wheat Kings’ Braden Schneider (No. 19 overall to the New York Rangers).
Goalies
Ironically, Canada may rely on its only undrafted player to handle its crease for the 2021 WJC.
Taylor Gauthier, who plays for the WHL’s Prince George Cougars, has been in the Hockey Canada program since he was 16-years-old and tended goal for the Maple Leaf in the country’s gold medal finish at the 2018 under-18 Hlinka-Gretzky Tournament in 2018.
Devon Levi, a seventh-round pick by the Panthers in 2020 who plays for Northeastern University, and Dylan Garand, a fourth-round pick by the Rangers in 2020 who plays for the WHL’s Kamloops Blazers, are Canada’s other options in goal.
It’s unclear right now which one Canada will lean on in Edmonton.
This is perhaps Canada’s only weak spot on its roster, whereas other medal favorites, the United States and Russia, are well set up in the crease. USA boasts the Spencer Knight-Dustin Wolf tandem and Russia will go with super prospect Yaroslav Askarov.
Forward to Watch: Dylan Cozens
The Sabres prospect put up nine points for Canada last year as an underager and could be in line for another huge tournament. Cozens is projected to center Canada’s top line with Dach and fellow Buffalo first-round draft pick Jack Quinn. His combination of length (Cozens is 6-foot-3), speed, and shooting ability should be a spectacle.
Defensemen to Watch: Thomas Harley
The Stars prospect (No. 18 overall pick in 2019) is a highly-skilled rearguard who will be leaned upon to create offense for Canada. He spent last season with the Mississauga Steelheads of the Ontario Hockey League but played in one playoff game with the Dallas Stars during the 2020 playoffs.
Newcomer to Watch: Cole Perfetti, Forward
It’s hard for folks out west to watch the talented junior players in the east, so the WJC will be a terrific chance to get a glimpse of the Winnipeg Jets first-rounder (No. 10 overall). Perfetti, who plays for the OHL’s Saginaw Spirit, is a lethal player on the rush with a quick release on his shot and superb puck handling and totaled 111 points in 61 games last season.
But there is Canada assistant coach Mitch Love, who is a cult hero in Everett Silvertips lore. Dylan Holloway is also a former Silvertips draft pick but decided to play at Wisconsin instead.
Expectations
There’s no reason Canada can’t hold a “gold-or-bust” mantra heading into Edmonton.
Canada has elite top-end talent and astounding depth, two ingredients for a championship. Canada’s goaltending is something to keep an eye on, but the Canadians are the odds-on favorites in 2021.
It didn’t take long for Dustin Donaghy to realize his Spokane Chiefs teammate Tyler Johnson was just one of those guys.
You know, one of those guys.
The type of person imbued with so much swagger and subtle confidence that winning just seemed easy.
Whether it was 3-on-3 games, shinny hockey, or games of Halo, Donaghy found out quickly during both of their rookie seasons in the Western Hockey League that Johnson was that type of slightly trusting, but mostly awe-inspiring person.
“He was just clutch, just with everything,” said Donaghy, who is now entering his second year on the Chiefs bench as an assistant coach. “… Tyler, in my mind, he always had his hand in something in a positive manner.”
Winning has been a constant for Johnson, a Spokane, Washington native, in all levels of hockey.
Johnson and the Chiefs won the Memorial Cup, one of the two most coveted championships in junior hockey, and won a Gold Medal with Team USA at the 2010 World Junior Championships in Saskatoon and Regina, Saskatchewan, the second most coveted.
He won a Calder Cup Trophy with the Norfolk Admirals in his first season in the American Hockey League. Johnson was named to the NHL All-Rookie Team and a finalist for the Calder Memorial Trophy in 2014.
And for the second time, Johnson and the Lightning are on the verge of the most prodigious accomplishment in hockey: the Stanley Cup.
The Journey
In the WHL, teams are allowed a 50-player protected list. It includes active players, bantam draft picks and other prospects.
Yes, that same player valuable enough to sign a seven-year, $35 million contract for a Stanley Cup Finalist wasn’t even deemed worthy of being one of the 1,100 players protected by the WHL.
Some of that may have been because of his size — he’s listed at only 5-foot-8 and 185 pounds, but the Spokane native proved to be somewhat of a late bloomer, too.
After failing to make the Chiefs team as a 16-year-old rookie, he erupted with a 120-point season for the Coeur d’Alene Lakers, a Junior ‘B’ team, and helped junior hockey decision-makers notice him.
It didn’t take long for his Chiefs teammates to notice him, either.
“Just looking at him, he kind of had his boyband haircut. You’d look at him and you’d think, is he really a hockey player?” Donaghy said of his first impressions of Johnson in 2007, their rookie seasons. “Then we’d get on the ice, and we’d say, ‘Wow, he’s way more than what he looks like on the outside.”
Of course, Johnson made his way back on to the Chiefs’ list and not only cracked the Chiefs’ Memorial Cup-winning roster as a 17-year-old rookie but was named playoff MVP after totaling five goals and eight points in 23 games.
“He fit in right from the get-go,” Donaghy said.
Johnson had his doubters because he was so unassuming, but it only took a couple of skates for his teammates to buy-in to Johnson being an influential player.
His impact in Junior Hockey was gradual, and while the undersized forward was one of the league’s top scorers as a 19-year-old, no draft buzz followed that production.
Johnson was even looking at playing USports hockey in Canada — or even just attending college in the U.S., where he wasn’t able to play varsity hockey due to the NCAA’s ridiculous amateurism rules, he told The Spokesman-Review, before his 20-year-old season, where he exploded for 53 goals and 115 points as an overage player.
Johnson ended his tenure in Spokane is a hell-of-a-lot of points, a gold medal with Team USA at the 2010 World Junior Championships and, of course, a Memorial Cup run that started it all.
Still, Johnson never attracted much, if any, draft buzz, likely due to his diminutive size.
But Tampa Bay was eventually convinced and inked him as an undrafted free agent.
That’s paid off big time for Tampa Bay, especially early on.
Johnson was a key cog in the Lightning’s 2015 Playoff run, forming ‘The Triplets’ line with Nikita Kucherov and Ondrej Palat. Johnson led the postseason with 13 goals and tied Patrick Kane for first with 23 points as the Lightning finished as Stanley Cup Finalists.
The Lightning fell to Chicago in six games in the 2015 Stanley Cup Final, the franchise’s second appearance.
Currently tied 1-1 with the Stars entering Wednesday’s Game 3, Johnson and the Lightning are presented with another bite at the apple.
A Spokane Kid
Johnson was born into a hockey family of sorts.
His parents, Ken and Debbie Johnson, met playing a rec-league hockey game at Spokane’s Eagle’s Ice-A-Rena. Debbie was a skating coach, who not only taught Tyler how to skate, but the Yamamoto brothers, Kailer and Keanu, as well.
Johnson is a cornerstone, along with Derek Ryan and Kailer Yamamoto, of an underground hockey community in Spokane and Northern Idaho that’s never been confused as a hockey hotbed, but has a burgeoning player pool and a passionate, underground fanbase.
A yearbook photo of Tyler Johnson from Central Valley High School
It’s been a tradition for all three to attend high school in the Spokane area — Johnson attended Central Valley in Spokane Valley — and, of course, play for the Chiefs as a hometown kid, an enriching experience that also comes with the burdens of unrealistic expectations.
Johnson cut through any concerns from the jump.
“He was the one that had to decide of enjoying the fame of being a hometown kid or really pursuing a career,” Donaghy said. “Obviously, that’s what he’s done and he’s a huge impact in Tampa’s lineup right now in the Stanley Cup Final.”
The Western Hockey League’s first ever US Challenge Cup kicked off this weekend in Kent. This 12-team tournament brings to town some of the best bantam teams in the Western United States & Canada. The tournament showcases the elite bantam players to scouts of WHL Teams and also helps introduce the WHL to these elite US bantam players who might not be as familiar with the WHL as Canadian players are already. The hope for the WHL is that some of the US born players would then choose the WHL as they take the next step in their hockey careers.
Naturally, I looked at the data to see how the WHL has been doing at identifying and recruiting elite US hockey players.
2019-20 season has seen the highest percent of US hockey players in the WHL at 9%.
Interestingly, US hockey players are more likely to play for one of the 5 US WHL teams than for one of the Canadian teams.
The Seattle Thunderbirds, host of the US Challenge Cup, are the outlier relative to the other US teams with only 1 US player on their roster, but this should change in the coming years….
Bantam Draft
The WHL Bantam Draft is the main gateway to the WHL. Most of the WHL players are drafted in the Bantam Draft.
Over the last two years, the US WHL teams have drafted the most US players from the WHL Bantam Draft. As the WHL attempts to attract more US players, it will be interesting to see if any of these numbers change more dramatically than they are already trending.
As the WHL attempts to attract more US players, it will be interesting to see if any of these numbers change more dramatically than they are already trending.