Younger Shepard won’t have Giant brother
Cole Shepard is losing a shepherd.
The speedy Vancouver Giants winger won’t have big brother Jackson Shepard showing him the WHL ropes as a Vancouver teammate for a second straight season.
A fleet-footed winger as well, Jackson is enrolling at the University of Western Ontario, which pulls him out of the competition for one of the Giants’ three 20-year-old posts for next season.
He was one of eight 2000-born players with the Giants last season, so there’s still plenty to be decided about the three overage posts.
There could be extra time to make those decisions, too. The WHL has announced that teams hope to start the 2020-21 campaign Oct. 2, but admits that launch date could get pushed back due to coronavirus concerns.
“It’s part of the league, it’s part of junior hockey,” Cole said of the 20-year-old situation. “They’re all good players, all good guys. We all love them all. It’s the unfortunate part of hockey. It’s one of the worst things when guys are forced to go.”
The 18-year-old Shepard, who is from West Vancouver, was a 2017 second-round bantam draft pick of the Giants. He had committed to Harvard University and was on the path to play there before pivoting and signing with Vancouver last July.
The Giants traded for Jackson last May, getting him from Lethbridge for a 2021 third-rounder. Giants general manager Barclay Parneta said that deal wasn’t a part of recruiting Cole, maintaining that Jackson’s character and work ethic was a fit for Vancouver’s approach, regardless.
The brothers did welcome the chance to play together. Born two years apart, they had done it only sparingly until that point.
Cole missed the first 12 games of 2019-20 recovering from an off-season hip surgery that had been scheduled before he signed with the Giants. Once active, it took him 10 games to get his first point, 14 games to record his first goal. He became more comfortable as things played out and he wound up with 11 goals and 29 points in 50 regular-season games.
You can make some comparisons between Shepard and the early Giants days of sniper Ty Ronning.
They’re both smaller guys, both dart around the ice. Ronning scored one goal in an injury-riddled 24 games as a 17-year-old in 2014-15. He had 31 goals as an 18-year-old.
Shepard will be asked by Giants brass to carry a scoring load this coming season, along with Justin Sourdif and the players who fill the 20-year-old positions.
“I think I can make a really big step. Coming off a surgery and stepping into a new league last season was a bit of a transition,” said Shepard.
He’s been training at the Planet Ice Delta, under Delta Hockey Academy head man Ian Gallagher and in a group that includes Giants defenceman Bowen Byram and Spokane defenceman Ty Smith. He says he’s just trying every day to “come with an open mind.”
“You just have to work hard every day,” said Shepard, who’s listing himself at five foot 11 and 165 pounds, which is about a 10-pound gain from the start of last season. “Whenever next year starts, the guys that are the best prepared are going to have a head start.”