Fit as a fiddle or fit as Fischer.
During the Prince George Cougars training camp, homegrown left winger Fischer O’Brien clearly stood out as the overall winner of the team’s fitness tests. For acing all his tests he got his name engraved on the Cougars’ Mountain Lion Award.
That came as no surprise to Cougars head coach and general manager Mark Lamb, who has gotten quite used to seeing the 19-year-old Prince George native put his superior conditioning to work on the ice as one of the team’s most versatile players. O’Brien doesn’t get the attention the team’s scoring leaders do but as a penalty-killer who draws regular assignments shadowing other team’s top players, few can match his footspeed, agility and smart stick techniques to frustrate opponents as a defensive specialist.
“It’s really good to see he’s put in the work in the summer, he is very serious about playing a role on this team and he knows where he fits,” said Cougars head coach and general manager Mark Lamb. “”I’m expecting a lot out of Fischer. The versatility is what he is but I think there’s a lot more than what he showed last year.”
O’Brien joined the Cougars after a trade from Lethbridge and played for the Cougars in the WHL hub in Kamloops in the spring/summer of 2020 as a 17-year-old, finishing with a goal and eight assists for nine points in 22 games, playing in what was a very young WHL. With the return of a full 68-game schedule, older team rosters and the lengthy travel involved, O’Brien’s numbers in 61 games dropped to 1-4-5, while still technically a rookie.
The Cats finished a respectable 9-10-2-1 in 2020-21 and that might have created a few false hopes for Cougars fans last season, when they struggled to make the playoffs while posting a 24-39-4-1 record.
“What we’re all learning about the Hub, that year it was all about development, it was very young and it wasn’t a great measuring stick of what you are and what you’re going to be, at all,” said Lamb. “It was just totally different and for some players who looked good in the Hub, it sure got a lot harder for them in the regular season because the competition was stiffer and it got older.
“Nobody knew that. We did well as such a young group in the Hub, but everybody in the Hub was young group right through the whole league. It wasn’t a great measuring stick, it was great for development and that’s about it.”
Following on the heels of the pandemic, the Cougars’ training camp that wrapped up two weekends ago was a rarity, with players from two draft classes performing in their first WHL auditions. COVID wiped out the WHL’s May 2021 draft and instead the 2006-born crop was drafted in December, followed in May of this year by the 2007-born prospects draft. Training camp marked the first time any of those players had a chance to showcase their skills for the Cougar brass in a traditional pre-season setting.
“I kind of liked it, you can really see the comparables and really see the difference in a year,” said Lamb.
One player who stood out for all the right reasons was 16-year-old right winger Terik Parascak, a five-foot-eight, 166-pound native of Lethbridge. Picking up where he left off as the leading scorer (55 goals, 43 assists, 98 points in 34 games) for Edge School U16s, Parascak showed the skills that earned him MVP honours in the Canadian Sports School Hockey League. Selected by the Cougars in the fourth round, 78th overall in the December 2021 draft, he scored throughout training camp scrimmages and also sniped a goal in each of the Cats’ exhibition games last weekend in Port Coquitlam.
“He's really weighted on the offensive side of the game, he’s a goal-scorer who puts up big numbers and he came into camp and showed very well,” said Lamb. “He played very well right through the whole camp so we signed him.
“His pedigree was [pretty high when he came in here and just scoring like that and playing a real smart game, and it’s carried over into exhibition. He’s passing all the tests right now.”
Heading into a weekend home-and-home exhibition series with the Kamloops Blazers that starts Friday in Kamloops, the Cougars are without four of their top players now attending NHL camps, including drafted D Ethan Samson (Philadelphia Flyers, sixth round, 174th overall, 2021), G Tyler Brennan (New Jersey Devils, fourth round, 102nd overall, 2022) and G Ty Young (Vancouver Canucks, fifth round, 144th overall, 2022).
Brennan and the Devils will attend the six-team Prospects Challenge tournament this weekend in Buffalo. Samson’s Flyers will host the New York Rangers in a pair of rookie games Saturday and Sunday in Allentown, Penn. Young will be involved in the Young Stars Classic tournament that pits the Canucks against the Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers and Winnipeg Jets Friday-Monday in Penticton.
D Keaton Dowhaniuk, 18, was invited to the Arizona Coyotes’ rookie camp and will join his 20-year-old brother Logan on the Coyotes blueline for games this weekend at the Rookie Faceoff tournament in San Jose, Calif.
C Riley Heidt will get his first taste of the preseason in the Kamloops series, fresh from his Hlinka Gretzky Cup win with Team Canada a month ago in Red Deer. Based on his play in that tournament, Heidt will certainly garner considerable attention from NHL scouts this season as a draft-eligible forward. He heads up a crop of returning Cougar forwards that includes Ziemmer, O’Brien, Carter MacAdams, Ryker Singer, Caden Brown, Blake Eastman, Carlin Dezainde and Cayden Glover.
Eighteen-year-old import winger Ondrej Becher of Czechia joined the Cats this season after they selected him 16th overall in the 202 CHL draft. D Viliam Kmec is the other import, back after a solid rookie season that landed him on early in the season on NHL Central Scouting’s prospect list.
“We’re just getting to know (Becher), he’s a real strong skater with a high hockey sense and we think he’s going to be great addition for us,” said Lamb.
Other rookies still in camp are G Madden Mulawka, RW Hunter Laing, C Gavin Schmidt, C Zachary Shantz, RW Nolan Chastko, LW Jett Lavoie and C Lee Shurgot. Shurgot, 15, was the ninth player chosen in the 2022 WHL Prospects Draft.
Pro scouts will continue to pay close attention to Hudson Thornton, 19, who brings stability to the back end with Kmec, Samson (assuming he doesn’t stick with the Flyers) and second-year Bauer Dumanski. D Tyson Buczkowski, picked 15h overall by the Cougars in 2021, could be ready to make the jump to full-time WHL employment after a year with the Saskatoon Blazers U-16s. Ephram McNutt and Leith Hunter, both 15-year-old defenceman, are sticking around for the rest of the exhibition season.
Saturday’s game will likely give Cougars fans their first looks at the team’s two newly-acquired 20-year-old forwards Noah Boyko and Chase Wheatcroft. Boyko, had 16 goals and 30 points in 47 games last season Lethbridge, where the six-foot-one, 190-pound native of Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., started his WHL career before a mid-season trade to Saskatoon. Wheatcroft also started out with Lethbridge and played 2 ½ seasons with the Hurricanes before he was dealt at mid-season to the Winnipeg ICE. Wheatcroft, who stands six-foot-two and weighs 185 pounds, totaled six points in 15 playoff games last spring with the ICE, after putting up 16 goals and 38 points in the regular season.
“Wheatcroft and Boyko have been excellent and it’s not surprising,” said Lamb. “They’ve been around the league and they know what’s going on and they’ve been really good at just mixing in with the group.”
Saturday’s Cougars-Blazers preseason game starts at 6 p.m. at CN Centre. All Saturday home games for the Cougars have shifted this season to 6 p.m. starts. The Cougars’ weekday (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays) games will start at 7 p.m. They have two holiday weekend matinee games at home – Sunday, Nov. 13 vs. Vancouver and Monday, Feb. 20 vs. Portland – which will start at 2 p.m.
The Cats open the season at home Sept. 23-24 against the Tri-City Americans.
The Cougars announced Tuesday that director of player development Steve O’Rourke has left the team to take on the job as an assistant coach for the Oshawa Generals of the Ontario Hockey League. O’Rourke has been with the Cougars since 2016, also serving as an assistant coach.
