Hindsight is well, you know, when looking back at the likes of NFL great Tom Brady drafted 199th in the sixth round and NHL Stars captain and Olympic gold-medallist Jamie Benn of Victoria 129th in the fifth round.
Anybody after the fact can pick and point at these things. Yet it’s still hard to believe that teams had 77 opportunities to select Terik Parascak before the Prince George Cougars finally took a flyer with the 78th selection in the fourth round of the 2021 Western Hockey League prospects draft.
Parascak, the leading scorer among WHL rookies and the consensus choice as WHL rookie of the year, scored two first-period goals that set the tone in the 10-4 victory over the Victoria Royals before 4,247 fans Saturday night at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre. The 17-year-old native of Lethbridge, Alta., has 41 goals and 99 points and is ranked by Sportsnet as 24th overall for the 2024 NHL draft. It’s a safe bet nobody will whiff on him in that big draft this summer.
The Cougars were also covered at the other end of the age scale Saturday. Zac Funk, one of those happy surprises that happens in the WHL when a formerly unheralded 20-year-old explodes in his final junior season, scored his 65th goal to move into a third-place tie with former NHLer Barry Pederson from 1980-81 on the all-time Victoria/Prince George Cougars single-season goals list. Funk has three games remaining to chase Ken Priestlay’s single-season franchise record 73 goals from 1985-86 and Rich Chernomaz’s second-leading 71 from 1982-83 when the franchise was located in Victoria.
It was a potential Western Conference first-round playoff match-up as the Cougars (46-15-4), top-ranked in the CHL national top-10 poll, extended their 16-game unbeaten streak to 14-0-2. The Royals, headed in the other direction, pushed their winless run to six games at 0-5-1 heading into their regular-season curtain-droppers Wednesday and Friday against the Wenatchee Wild at the Memorial Centre.
“It was a total group effort from top to bottom,” said Royals head coach James Patrick.
He did not mean that in a good way.
“I’ve not done a good enough job of getting through. We have not been getting consistent effort over the last period of time. It’s not X’s and O’s. We have two weeks [before the playoffs] to regroup and re-discover how to play.”
Royals rookie defenceman Matthew Keller, taken four spots ahead of Parascak at No. 74 with Victoria’s third overall draft selection in 2021, scored his first career WHL goal Saturday. “Getting my first goal was great. But it’s tough to feel good after a game like that,” said Keller.
“It wasn’t our best night. We didn’t show as the team we are. We’ve got to get back to our core values and keep it simple.”
Other Royals goals came from Tyson Laventure, Dawson Pasternak and Escalus Burlock. Czech-import Ondrej Becher scored four goals for Prince George against Royals rookie goaltender Jayden Kraus, who was taken 46th in the third round of that 2021 WHL draft, and who faced 40 shots to just 16 for Prince George goalie Ty Young.
ICE CHIPS: Defenceman Carsten Kayter, selected by the Royals one spot ahead of Parascak in 2021, opted instead for Nebraska-Omaha of the NCAA. … The Royals are now assured to start the playoffs on the road.
