The Great WHL Adventure: Starting Out in Saskatoon

The start of my ambitious journey to see all 22 WHL teams play in their home arena

I’ve loved the great sport of hockey for as long as I can remember. I played minor hockey from ages 10 to 12, collected hockey cards with my uncle and even tried my hand at making my own hockey cards as a teenager, and, after discovering the River City Sports catalogue, made sure to ask for as many hockey-related things as possible for Christmas and birthdays. It rarely happened (because stuff is expensive), so when my wife bought me a Jack Hughes Reverse Retro 2.0 jersey for Christmas, it made up for all those years of wishing. In college, I had a friend who wrote about the Detroit Red Wings for The Hockey Writers, and when I was looking for some extra income in 2019, I reached out and joined their Ottawa Senators team. Five years later, I’m now running the Prospects & Draft Substack.

But, until now, I never stopped and asked myself, “Why?” 

I could blame my nationality; growing up Canadian, the sport is all around you, but neither my brother nor my sister ever became hockey fans. I could look at my dad, who took me to some of my first hockey games and helped me learn about the old stars and how to pronounce the names on my hockey cards, or my uncle, who got me my first set of hockey cards. Then there’s my uncle on my mom’s side, who took me and my brother to our first NHL game in 2003 when the Calgary Flames hosted his favourite team, the Montreal Canadiens. Maybe it’s all of the above. Yet none of them feel like the root of my passion for the sport. I hated playing hockey as a kid, and I remember being a fan of the game as far back as 1996 when I was just five years old, when I cried my eyes out after learning that the Winnipeg Jets had left Canada. Where did that come from? 

I may never know how it all began, but a lot of my memories come back to seeing junior hockey games. I remember watching games with my dad and uncle in the old Medicine Hat Arena. Before my other uncle took me to a Flames game, he brought me to see the Red Deer Rebels, where we sat in the first row and saw the players crash into the glass harder and louder than I thought possible.