Just shy of the 10-game mark at the NHL level where a year would have been burned off his entry-level contract, 2022 fourth overall pick Shane Wright was sent by the Kraken to the Ontario Hockey League on Jan. 6. The center had just captained Canada to gold at the 2023 IIHF World Junior Championships in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on his 19th birthday.
He was immediately dealt from the Kingston Frontenacs, where he played two seasons, to a stronger contender in the Windsor Spitfires. He’s on a pace of two points per game through his first seven appearances in Windsor with six goals and eight assists, but has missed most of the past three weeks.
Wright sat out three games with a lower-body injury in late January. He had a goal and two assists in his return to the lineup, a 7-4 Spitfires win over the Soo Greyhounds on Feb. 2.
He exited the lineup again with a lower-body injury and missed the Spitfires’ next four games, according to the team’s Twitter account.
Circus rolls on
What’s Jagger Firkus up to in the Western Hockey League? Much of the same.
After his first hat trick of the season for the Moose Jaw Warriors on Wednesday night, Firkus has 23 goals and 35 assists through 50 games and is on track to exceed last season’s totals. He had a 20-game point streak that stretched from October to December and has registered at least a point in 37 of 50 games.
Seattle’s second-round pick in last year’s draft sat 11th in WHL points as of Saturday morning. He’s first in game-winning goals, two ahead of projected 2023 top overall pick Connor Bedard, who leads the league in goals and points.
Pucks on net
Speaking of hat tricks, Ty Nelson scored the first of his Ontario Hockey League career Feb. 5 in a 9-1 win for the North Bay Battalion.
Fellow Kraken prospect and Battalion teammate Kyle Jackson helped set up Nelson’s second goal that night. The 2022 third-round pick finished it off with a blast directly off a faceoff. A defenseman, Nelson has 60 points (19 goals, 41 assists) in 50 games and led the OHL in shots on goal through Saturday with 236.
Forward Jackson, a seventh-rounder in 2022, has 28 goals and 40 assists through the same number of games. He and Nelson are second and third on the team in scoring, respectively, and Jackson is tied for seventh in the OHL in points.
Tucker Robertson, who was taken by the Kraken in the fourth round in 2022, is right above Jackson in sixth with 70 points in 49 games. Robertson had a hat trick of his own Thursday night with the Peterborough Petes. It was his second three-goal game of the season.
Elsewhere in the OHL, since returning from shoulder surgery Jan. 5, 2021 third-round pick Ryan Winterton has a point-per-game pace going in 16 outings (six goals, 10 assists) with the London Knights.
David Goyette, another 2022 pick, leads the Sudbury Wolves in scoring and is tied for 14th in the OHL with 61 points despite recently serving a four-game suspension for a high hit.
Change of scenery
On Friday, TSN highlighted 2021 fifth-rounder Jacob Melanson’s 38th goal of the season on a breakaway. Melanson sits eighth (32 assists) in points in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League through 42 games, fewer outings than anyone above him on the list. He’s second in the league in goals and tied for second in short-handed tallies with six.
He’s kept up the pace on a new team. Acadie-Bathurst Titan traded Melanson to the Sherbrooke Phoenix on Jan. 2.
Streaky streaky
Ben MacDonald’s season-high seven-game point streak for the West Kelowna Warriors of the British Columbia Hockey League ended Feb. 4. He’s had three point streaks of six or more games this season and 17 goals plus 15 assists through 38 games. Seattle selected the forward in the third round of the 2022 draft.
On, Wisconsin
Wisconsin freshman defenseman Tyson Jugnauth, who was selected by the Kraken in the fourth round last year, had a four-point weekend (three goals, one assist) as his Badgers were swept by No. 6 Michigan on Feb. 3-4.
“The ceiling he has offensively is really special,” Badgers coach Tony Granato told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Having four points in that weekend, that shows that even though the team is struggling, even though it’s a hard place to play, he was able to still able to find a way to help us on the score sheet, so I think he’s gained a ton of confidence in himself.”
Wisconsin dropped its sixth straight game Friday and sits 10-19-0 on the season.
In the minors
This week the Kraken’s American Hockey League affiliate, the Coachella Valley Firebirds, lost one of their leading scorers for the rest of the regular season. The team announced center Andrew Poturalski underwent successful surgery “to repair a lower-body injury.” His rehab is expected to take four to six months.
Coachella Valley (30-7-5, 2nd Pacific Division) is also without defenseman Gustav Olofsson, who filled in for the Kraken three times this season. He hasn’t suited up for the Firebirds since Dec. 18 due to an apparent injury.
Poturalski last played Jan. 26. He still sits first in assists (31) and third in points (42) among the Firebirds. He was named to the 2023 AHL All-Star Classic, which took place Feb. 5-6 in Laval, Que., but replaced by Firebirds captain Max McCormick.
Defenseman Ryker Evans, a second-round pick in 2021, also took part in the All-Star Classic as an AHL rookie. In his first season since making the jump from the WHL, Evans has four goals and 22 assists through 40 games.
McCormick (20 goals, 24 assists) Kole Lind (16 goals, 25 assists) and Jesper Froden (23 goals, 22 assists) make up the Firebirds’ scoring leaders.