Contacts alum Heidt rolling with WHL’s Cougars
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| Riley Heidt in action for the Contacts in 2020. |
It seems like a lifetime ago that Heidt was an underage ace player along with best friend Brayden Yager on the Saskatoon Contacts under-18 AAA team. Back in the 2019-20 campaign, Heidt and Yager were 14-year-old forward with the Contacts.
Playing in the Saskatchewan Male AAA Hockey League, Heidt appeared in all of the Contacts 44 regular season games in 2019-20 posting 17 goals and 20 assists for 37 points. Yager also appeared in all of the Contacts 44 regular season games in that season recording 18 goals and 24 assists for 42 points.
When the 2020 WHL Bantam Draft came around, Heidt went second overall to the Prince George Cougars and Yager went third overall to the Moose Jaw Warriors. The only player selected ahead of the two Saskatoon area products was phenom centre Connor Bedard, who went first overall to the Regina Pats.
Fast forward to the current campaign, and Heidt is still rolling on the ice in his 17-year-old season. After picking up an assist for the Cougars on Tuesday night in their 5-2 setback to the Tigers in Medicine Hat, Heidt, who stands 5-foot-11 and weighs 182 pounds, has appeared in all 40 of Prince George’s regular season games collecting 19 goals and 38 assists for 57 points.
Heidt currently sits fifth in the WHL’s scoring race. Everett Silvertips 18-year-old centre Austin Roest also has 57 points, but he sits ahead of Heidt on the scoring list due to netting 25 goals.
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| Riley Heidt played for the Contacts as a 14-year-old. |
The upcoming NHL Entry Draft will be held June 28 to 29 at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee.
Heidt will play in the CHL/NHL Top Prospects Game to be held on January 25 at the Langley Events Centre in Langley, B.C.
One of the biggest challenges to why Heidt might not be higher up on NHL Central Scouting’s Mid-Term Rankings might revolve around the opportunities scouts have to see him. On the WHL circuit, the Cougars closest road trip is a six-hour bus ride to Kamloops to face the Blazers.
In the current days when it seems flights get cancelled frequently and the lengthy drive it takes to get to Prince George, it is easier for scouts to wait for Heidt to get to a major centre or a WHL city along the Trans-Canada Highway before seeing him play.
When it comes to development, Heidt is in good hands with the Cougars, who have Mark Lamb as head coach and general manager, Josh Dixon as associate coach and Carter Rigby as an assistant coach.
Still, the upcoming NHL Entry Draft is expected to be one of the deepest in decades and the talent level among the 17-year-olds in the WHL is arguably the strongest it has been in the last 30 years. In the WHL scoring race, four of the top five leading scorers are in their 17-year-old campaigns, and that list of four includes Heidt in the fifth spot.
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| Contacts alum Riley Heidt is having a great season in the WHL. |
Yager sits 16th in WHL scoring with 52 points coming off 20 goals and 32 assists in 43 regular season games with the Warriors.
Due to how deep the 17-year-old talent pool is in the WHL, the number of times one of those players can been seen by NHL scouts becomes even more important as to where they will be taken in the upcoming NHL Entry Draft.
Heidt is a lock to be selected in the upcoming NHL Entry Draft. He will be hoping NHL scouts won’t forget about him when it comes to where he will be picked in that draft.
Warriors slip past Blades 3-1 for third
straight win
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| Egor Sidorov scored for the Blades on Tuesday night. |
On Tuesday night, the Warriors won their third straight game downing the visiting Saskatoon Blades 3-1 in a WHL regular season clash played before 2,488 spectators at the Moose Jaw Events Centre. With the win, the Warriors improve to 27-14-0-2 to sit one point back of the Blades for third overall in the WHL’s Eastern Conference. The Blades fell to 27-9-2-1 with the setback, but they have four games in hand on the Warriors.
The Warriors got on the board at the 7:20 mark of the first period when left-winger Eric Alarie tapped in a backdoor pass at the right side of the Saskatoon net. Warriors star overage centre Ryder Korczak made a beauty feed across the face the Blades net to set up Alarie for the game’s opening tally.
At the 9:34 mark of the second, Warriors 19-year-old left-winger Josh Hoekstra fired a seeing-eye point shot through a screen into the Saskatoon goal to increase the host’s advantage to 2-0.
Just under three minutes later, the Blades scored on the power play to trim the Warriors lead to 2-1 on a blast form the right slot by import Belarusian right-winger Egor Sidorov. Sidorov blew home a backdoor feed from linemate Trevor Wong for his 23rd goal of the season.
The Warriors were able to hold off the Blades from that point and sealed victory with a short-handed empty-net goal by star centre Brayden Yager with 1:07 remaining in the third period. The empty-net goal was Yager’s 20th tally of the campaign. Korczak picked up his second assist of the contest on Yager’s marker.
Connor Ungar turned away 20 shots to pick up the win in goal for the Warriors. Austin Elliott turned away 28-of-30 shots to take the setback in net for the Blades.
The two sides will go at it again on Wednesday in Saskatoon at 7 p.m. at the SaskTel Centre.
Vanstone tracks Bedard’s statistical
pursuits, other notes
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| Connor Bedard is chasing many statistical feats. |
Forever Regina Leader-Posts sports columnist and scribe Rob Vanstone is tracking Bedard’s statistical exploits, and Bedard is on pace to do things that haven’t been seen in some time. After being held without a point in the Pats first regular season game, Bedard has netted at least one point in each of the 30 games he’s suited up for the Pats since piling up a league high in goals (36), assists (42) and points (78).
Vanstone, who is a lifelong resident of Regina, noted that Bedard is in pursuit of the Pats team record for longest point scoring streak. The current Pats record in that department stands at 47 contests, and it is shared by Jock Callander and Wally Schreiber both set in the 1981-82 campaign.
Bedard is on pace to become the first Pats player to score 50 goals in 50-or-fewer games since Dale Derkatch back in the 1983-84 campaign.
Vanstone is one of the few veterans that is left on the WHL beat, and WHL followers are able to enjoy knowing about these statistical gems due to Vanstone’s experience.
Vanstone has listed more statistical gems with regard to Bedard in a column that can be found by clicking right here.
- The Winnipeg Ice topped the latest installment of the CHL’s Top 10 Rankings that were released on Tuesday. Three other WHL club’s cracked the list with the Seattle Thunderbirds coming in at third, the Kamloops Blazers at seventh and the Saskatoon Blades at eighth. The Blazers will host the Memorial Cup tournament that crowns an annual CHL champion. The Portland Winterhawks were an honourable mention for this week’s rankings.
- Gregg Drinnan’s latest post in his Taking Note blog is a good one. It leads with a controversy swirling around Russian defenceman Ivan Provorov, who is a grad of the WHL’s Brandon Wheat Kings, not taking warm-ups on Tuesday night for the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers. That post can be found by clicking right here.
- On January 9, I had new content appear on the Howe Happenings blog that supports the Gordie Howe Sports Complex. I put together a piece on the John Sands Classic Long Track Meet hosted by the Saskatoon Lions Speed Skating Club returning to the Clarence Downey Speed Skating Oval for the first time since January of 2019. That piece can found by clicking right here. I also created a photo roundup that shows the beauty sites that can be seen during the winter season on the Complex grounds, and that piece can be found by clicking right here.
If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.
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