WHL DRAFTS
Overall depth of 2020 class has teams throughout league looking for big things in the future
When the Moose Jaw Warriors went to make their first pick in the 2020 Western Hockey League Bantam Draft, they knew they were going to land an extremely high-end recruit from Saskatchewan.
The question was just who it was going to be.
The Warriors ended up selecting Saskatoon Contacts forward Brayden Yager with the third overall selection, kicking off their run through what is widely considered to be one of the deepest WHL Drafts in recent history. “I think the day started out very well; we had a pretty good idea that Yager would be our guy,” said general manager Alan Millar. “We’re very excited to add a guy who has elite hockey ability and skill sense combined with a real will and determination in his game, a strong compete. He’s a complete player with a 200-foot game and has a lot of intangibles that make him a high-end prospect, so we’re really excited to have Brayden.” The Warriors used their second pick on speedy Balgonie Prairie Storm forward Ben Riche before selecting their lone goaltender of the draft, Jackson Unger from the Calgary Bisons in the third round.
“Our guys are real high on Riche in the second round, a kid out of Regina whose speed and compete our guys really like,” Millar said. “And when we got to our third pick, we were debating a couple guys, but our number one goalie was still on the board and our guys believe there is a big upside in this young man and he has a chance to be a top goaltender. We felt at that point in the draft, that was a smart pick for us.”
The Warriors didn’t have another draft pick until the seventh round, but testament to the depth of the draft, there were plenty of their top-rated prospects still available even at that point.
“You have 22 teams that are evaluating 300, 400-plus 14-year-old players, and he draft gets to a certain point and you get to a certain point on your draft list where it’s all over the board,” Millar said. “For us, we were still drafting guys we had rated fairly high. We stuck to our principles in terms of hockey sense and compete, and we’re real comfortable with the skating and speed of the group we drafted today.
“It was a great job by Jason Ripplinger leading our group, we had some challenges the last four to six weeks in terms of doing thing differently and we’re really pleased with how well things went.”
One thing that was easily noticeable is the amount of talent that came out of Saskatchewan. Word going into the draft was the province would see plenty of players picked, but what ended up happening was beyond the pale.
“The first two rounds, every name that went up on the board, our guys were ‘good player, good player’, and a lot of those guys were from Saskatchewan,” Millar said. “To have seven picks go in the first round and over 50 young men drafted from our home province, we were fortunate to draft five players from Saskatchewan so it was a great day all around.”
An aspect of the draft that sometimes gets overlooked is what happens to those youngsters who didn’t see their name pop up on WHL.ca.
Millar has a simple message for that crew.
“Keep your head up. Give yourself an opportunity by working hard,” he said matter-of-factly. “At the end of the day, it’s a challenge to evaluate 14-year-old hockey players and there are late bloomers. The listing of players, inviting them to camp and adding them to our list is a big part of what we do in terms of putting our teams together.”
One doesn’t have to look very far to see just what can happen if that hard work is put in.
“We had a local guy here in Atley Calvert who didn’t get drafted out at Prairie Hockey Academy,” Millar said. “We listed him early in his 15-year-old year and he earned his way to get signed, he played 14 games as a 16-year-old last year, captained the AAA Warriors to a great season last year. He got recognized because he worked his butt off and combined that with some good hockey sense and skill.
“So the guys went later in the draft, at the end of the day the number doesn’t matter and if you didn’t get drafted, keep your head up, there are other opportunities to play in the league so just keep working hard.”