Inside the NHL
No one is about to liken Kraken prospect Ryker Evans to another offensive-minded defenseman from his Calgary, Alberta, hometown who last season snagged a Triple Crown’s worth of hardware.
But given the Evans family is friends with that of Stanley Cup champion Cale Makar of the Colorado Avalanche, who also happens to be the reigning Conn Smythe Trophy winner as playoff MVP and Norris Trophy recipient as the NHL’s top defenseman, it’s a tough connection to overlook. Especially when Evans, 20, once teamed on a squad coached by his father, Mike, for several years of spring hockey with Makar’s younger brother, Taylor, in which his future NHL All-Star sibling occasionally showed up and took the ice with them.
“I grew up playing with his brother, so we were always together,” said Evans, the Kraken’s second-round draft pick last year who signed a three-year, entry-level deal with the club this summer. “We were always at their house. And we know their family real well.”
That said, this fall is about Evans charting his own NHL course. It began with this week’s rookie camp at the Kraken Community Iceplex before Evans takes part in his second NHL training camp starting Thursday.
“My goal as always is to come here and prove myself as to why I belong on a team and how I can help,” Evans said.
Having to prove himself worthy of inclusion has pretty much been the story of his hockey life. Evans represents the first serious gamble on amateur talent taken by the Kraken franchise, one that skeptics likely won’t be satisfied with until he’s suited up in Seattle colors — perhaps at some point this season — and swinging outcomes.
While last year’s No. 2 overall selection, Matty Beniers, and this summer’s No. 4 overall pick, Shane Wright, were draft no-brainers, Evans being taken at No. 35 overall in July 2021 had jaws hitting the floor.
Few expected Evans to go higher than the fourth round, owing largely to factors plaguing him since those youth hockey days hanging around the Makars. It was never a given Evans would even make teams not coached by his dad, owing to a lack of size caused by early struggles with Celiac disease — an immune-system reaction to gluten that prevents the body from absorbing key nutrients — and a delayed growth spurt that only seriously began during his junior career with the Regina Pats of the Western Hockey League.
Still, even against boys nearly twice his size, Evans kept proving he belonged. Often he proved he belonged at a level higher, though the whispers about his lack of size persisted.
The junior-level Pats didn’t take him in the Bantam draft until 209th overall before just 22 players. And that was only after a former Everett Silvertips player turned scout named Campbell Elynuik put his reputation on the line pleading with the Pats to select a player then only 5 feet 3 and 110 pounds.
Legend has it the entire Kraken scouting staff made similar pleas to general manager Ron Francis to take Evans after seeing him play only one full WHL season. He’d broken his leg his rookie campaign, played a full schedule in 2019-20, then had his predraft season shortened to 24 games by the pandemic.
Still, he’d been a point-a-game player those two dozen contests, scoring three goals and leading all WHL defensemen with 25 assists. His advanced analytics on things such as offensive-zone entries, expected goals when he shoots and drawing primary assists on scoring by teammates, were rink lengths ahead of others at his position.
And oddly enough, where some prospects might feel pressure to prove themselves to an NHL team going out on such a limb, the Kraken’s selection put Evans at ease.
It was, after all, the first time in his career a team seemed to suggest there was a place for him at the next level. Freed from that unknown, he spent his final WHL season perfecting what hooked the Kraken in the first place.
Evans scored 14 goals and added 47 assists in 63 games.
“I had a bigger role on that team, so it was a lot more fun,” Evans said. “I got more reps, and it allowed me to work on my game and to develop. So going into last season it was just playing for my [entry-level] contract and allowing me to show them my skills and all that stuff. It was a bit of a weight lifted off my shoulders for sure.”
And this summer, with no early WHL training camp to attend, he filled those extra weeks training with his dad — a renowned Calgary power-skating coach counting several NHL and junior players as former pupils. New Kraken assistant coach Dave Lowry, who lives in Calgary, spent time on the ice with them.
Last month, father and son also watched Makar and teammate Logan O’Connor parade the Stanley Cup down the city’s Bow River in a boat during the private time they got to spend with the trophy. Makar has trained off and on with Evans’ dad and once filled in as a goalie for him at a 3-on-3 youth tournament on New Year’s Eve in 2011.
“I know both families, and it was their two big crowds [of friends] that were out there,” Mike Evans said. “So we both got to watch it from a distance.”
And even distant dreams have a way of becoming reality.
Makar was viewed as similarly “undersized” when drafted by the Avalanche and still is listed at just 5-11, 187 pounds. And while no one is touting Evans as a future Norris Trophy winner, there is a happy middle ground between that and a prospect.
The Kraken would love for Evans and the left-handed shot he spent the summer honing, along with skating explosiveness that first caught their eye, to become a puck-moving blue-line mainstay. He’ll likely begin this season with the AHL Coachella Firebirds before an NHL debut that could follow as early as next spring.
For the record, the Kraken have Evans listed at 5-11, 189 on their training-camp roster. Unofficially, somebody needs to buy the Kraken a better tape measure.
Standing next to him the other day, I can confidently assert that he’s at least 6-1. Evans didn’t dispute my estimate.
“They’ve gotta start giving me a couple of inches,” he quipped.
And once they do, the Kraken hope Evans takes a mile.