Penticton, B.C., can't get enough hockey. The annual Young Stars Classic featuring the Canucks, Flames, Oilers and Jets brought Hall of Famers and top prospects to the lakeside city and did not disappoint.
Penticton, B.C., can't get enough hockey. The annual Young Stars Classic featuring the Canucks, Flames, Oilers and Jets brought Hall of Famers and top prospects to the lakeside city and did not disappoint.
PENTICTON, B.C. - For a Jr. A barn, the South Okanagan Events Centre is a palace.
The dual-sheet complex, which seats 4,700 in its main rink, opened its doors in 2008. It hosts concerts and special events, but its anchor tenants are all about puck: the Okanagan Hockey Academy, the B.C. Hockey Hall of Fame and the BCHL's Penticton Vees.
Fred Harbinson has been behind the Vees' bench since the year before the move into the new facility and has crafted an elite program. His team has just won its second-straight championship, and its 2022-23 leading scorer, Bradly Nadeau, was drafted 30th overall by the Carolina Hurricanes last June.
In recent years, the Vees have also been the Jr. A program of choice for some prominent NHL alumni who wanted to see their sons go the NCAA route.
While watching a Young Stars practice, you might look over and see Hockey Hall of Famer Scott Niedermayer taking in the proceedings. His sons Jackson and Joshua both played on the Vees before attending Arizona State University, and 15-year-old Luke is now on the OHA's U-17 team.
Joe Nieuwendyk's son, also Jackson, just completed two years in Penticton and is now at Canisius College. Mike Richter's son, William, or Beanie, played three years in Penticton and is now at Yale. And Jason Arnott's nephew, Callum, will be the Vees captain for the 2023-24 season, his second with the team.
The high-end trappings of the SOEC also make it perfect for Western Canada's NHL prospect tournament. Officially hosted by the Vancouver Canucks, the Young Stars Classic has gone through a few different iterations over the years. It works best in its current form as a three-game round-robin that also includes the Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames and Winnipeg Jets.
The two ice sheets allow for simultaneous practice sessions. The expansive dressing-room facilities give all four squads the space they need to put down roots for a few days. The picture-perfect late-summer weather in a lakeside town where tourist season is winding down makes Penticton an appealing spot for hockey management, scouts, players and fans. And when the players venture out for a team dinner, not exactly inconspicuous in their team-logoed polo shirts, the locals keep a respectful distance.
The Canucks brain trust was out en masse in Penticton, overflowing the suite in the southwest corner of the arena during their games. Most noticeable, of course, are Hall of Famers Daniel and Henrik Sedin. They're now working on the ice in player development under their old teammate Chris Higgins. And they can still attract a crowd of star-struck kids for a photo op in the concourse between periods of Vancouver's tournament-opening 7-1 win over the Calgary Flames.
The Oilers were supported by the most vocal fan base in Penticton this year — no surprise, perhaps. They're having success at the NHL level and pushing the narrative that they could be the team to snap Canada's Stanley Cup curse, even while GM Ken Holland is brutally frank about the fact that he has traded many draft picks and prospects to keep his squad in 'win now' mode — not ideal when putting together a roster for a Young Stars event.
The Oilers leaned into the 'young' part of that title, particularly with three 18-year-olds in net and only one of them drafted. They finished with a record of 1-1-1, and their tournament standout was another 18-year-old right-shot defenseman, Beau Akey.
Drafted in the second round in Nashville in June, Akey said he was starstruck when Sam Gagner came up to say hello to him at the Oilers' facility recently and was looking forward to his first meeting with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. When wearing the blue and orange for the first time, the Barrie Colts' rearguard played with poise and maturity, showing confidence while quarterbacking the first-unit power play and finishing with a goal and two assists.
The Jets went 1-2-0, scoring just six goals in three games. Their lone win came in a shootout against Vancouver, in no small part thanks to world juniors gold medalist Thomas Milic. The 20-year-old reigning WHL goalie of the year showed that his stellar puck-stopping skills could translate to the next level as he made 39 saves on 41 shots.
Passed over twice in the draft before being selected in the fifth round in June, a good camp could earn Milic a spot in the AHL this fall, where he can continue his development.
Under new Calgary Wranglers head coach Trent Cull, the Flames prospects deserve credit for rebounding from their 7-1 opening-night drubbing by the Canucks. A day later, they got into a chippy Battle of Alberta tilt with the Edmonton Oilers, which ended with a 4-on-3 power-play goal in overtime by the 6-foot-8 Adam Klapka.
Now a second-year pro in North America, the 23-year-old Czech plays with an edge and makes a better door than a window when he screens at the net front.
Matt Coronato, Calgary's 20-year-old first-rounder from 2021, also showed some promising signs, especially when he had time and space to unleash his one-timer on the power play.
For the host Canucks, whose prospect pool has been decimated by trades and by draft picks who didn't pan out, Young Stars should help fuel the narrative that the new management group is on the right track.
Vancouver was the only team to finish Young Stars without a regulation loss, with a 2-0-1 record. The Canucks also had more of their own players in the lineup than any other team, with just four camp invites, and the best skater in Penticton was winger Aidan McDonough.
At 23, he's a Young Stars first-timer after he turned pro in March. McDonough scored a power-play goal in all three games to finish as the tournament leader and turned heads with his precision.
McDonough got into six NHL games at the end of last season, scoring once. The Canucks are overflowing with bodies on the wing, so he'll have a tough time cracking the team's opening-night lineup. But as a seventh-round pick from 2019 who is quickly developing into a media darling, he's looking like a quality asset.
Last season, the Canucks got 39 goals out of Russian free-agent signing Andrei Kuzmenko. This past spring, they may have unearthed more gems.
With the second-largest workload of the tournament in net at 99 minutes, 6-foot-5 Belarusian stopper Nikita Tolopilo finished with a 1.82 GAA after giving up three goals on 29 shots. Defenseman Akito Hirose, who played seven NHL games after coming out of college last season, finished as the tournament scoring leader with five points, while Cole McWard was right behind with four, and center Max Sasson put up three points.
As Ken Holland explains, allowing prospects to show themselves against their peers is what makes tournaments like Young Stars such valuable evaluation tools. That's why he helped pioneer the original Traverse City tournament back in the late '90s and why 29 of the NHL's 32 teams took part in a prospects event this year.
The energy around the rink and around town sizzles with the pure joy of another hockey season about to begin. The wins and losses may not matter, but with jobs and reputations on the line, Young Stars is still serious business.