Berkly Catton Goes From WHL Final To Major Award 

SPOKANE – Somewhere in the decades before and after reviving his adopted Eastern Washington hometown’s sports fortunes, local business icon and Spokane Chiefs owner Bobby Brett learned about young talent.

And when it comes to last summer’s Kraken first-round draft pick Berkly Catton, he sees his major junior hockey team’s greatest asset through the eyes of someone with athletic brothers of non-linear destinies. Brett’s older brother, Ken, was the “can’t miss” sibling, and the youngest pitcher ever in a World Series game at age 19 with the 1967 Boston Red Sox before arm trouble derailed his promising career.

And then, there was younger brother George, the “third best player” on his high school baseball team, who somehow managed 3,154 hits with the Kansas City Royals and enshrinement in Cooperstown. As for himself, Bobby Brett, who, just like his eldest brother, John, had briefly played minor league ball, later embarked on a business career and 40 years ago led a company with his siblings that purchased the Spokane Indians Class A baseball team.

Several summers later, in 1990, they bought the Chiefs and managing partner Brett, who’d promised his wife they’d live in Spokane six months before returning to California, has never left. Last month, those same Chiefs came up just short in vying for their third Western Hockey League championship -- having previously captured two and gone on to win Memorial Cups in 1991 and 2008 – with Catton largely carrying them on a 5-foot-11, 170-pound frame that hasn’t completely buckled yet.

“He’s a special player,” Brett said as the Chiefs were hosting the visiting Medicine Hat Tigers from Alberta in their first WHL title home game in 17 years. “He’s a very special player.”

And though the Chiefs ultimately dropped the league championship round 4-1, Catton on Friday received huge honors from the major junior umbrella Canadian Hockey League in being named its Sportsman of the Year at its awards gala in Toronto. Catton, 19, selected No. 8 overall by the Kraken, beat out Ilya Protas of the Windsor Spitfires and Julius Sumpf of the Moncton Wildcats for the award.

It goes to the player judged the most sportsmanlike of the 60 major junior hockey teams comprising the CHL – an umbrella organization comprising the WHL, the Ontario Hockey League and the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League.

Kraken draft pick Tyson Jugnauth of the Portland Winterhawks came up short in his finalist bid for defenseman of the year, beaten out by Sam Dickinson of the London Knights.

Gavin McKenna, whose Medicine Hat team defeated Catton’s squad in the WHL final, was not surprisingly named CHL Player of the Year. McKenna is being overwhelmingly touted as the consensus No. 1 overall pick in next year’s NHL Draft.

Even before his award, Catton was viewed as special by the Chiefs and owner Brett. And not just because Catton helped Brett’s award-winning office staff fill 6,600 nightly seats this past season – the league’s second-best attendance -- at Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena, where fans often sport the Kraken draftee’s jersey, wave signs with his name and even tote his Bobblehead doll. Nor because Catton averaged an astounding 2.7 points per game the first 19 contests after a January trade brought Washington Capitals draftee Andrew Cristall to the Chiefs from Kelowna and gave Catton a linemate with similar elite talent.

No, Brett is fond of Catton because he already excels at life beyond sports, helping shape the “culture” of a Chiefs team that will feel him long after he leaves. And Brett knows that in the non-linear world of pro sports progression, where even the brightest stars are hampered by injuries, setbacks and challenges they never saw coming, the inner stuff matters.

“It’s easy when your best player is leading the example of doing all the right things,” Brett said. “He’s fit. He’s respectful. He’s just someone that you look around and you say: ‘I want my son to be just like this kid.’”

He’s also at peace with Catton’s pending departure, perhaps coming as soon as this fall if the Kraken give him an extended audition beyond training camp.

“If he makes the Kraken, it’s a great success story,” Brett said. “That’s what we’re here to do, get him where he wants to be. Everybody wants to be in the NHL.”

Chiefs general manager Matt Bardsley, who deals with the team’s off-ice community and sponsorship ventures, agreed Catton, the Canadian son of two teachers in his native Saskatchewan, has been a valued asset.

“I mean, he’s got a lot going on in his life, but he’s always got a smile on his face,” Bardsley said. “I think he understands that responsibility.”

Bardsley has watched Catton’s on-ice “preparation and drive” he says younger Chiefs emulate. Off it, the team’s scholastic player of the year last season always looks fans and sponsors in the eye at public meet-ups and asks questions about their lives.

“Even when we recruit players to come here to Spokane, they want to talk about the organization and the facility and our coaching staff,” Bardsley said. “But usually within that, it was also ‘Berkly’ – they wanted to talk about him. People are aware of him. It doesn’t get to his head, though. He always tries to be the best version of himself.”

The Kraken hoped to land that type of leader when they selected Catton eighth overall. As for Catton’s hockey skills, team owner Brett feels his No. 27 could someday hang from the Spokane arena’s rafters alongside retired Chiefs jerseys from Tyler Johnson and Ray Whitney.

The criteria are rigid: Beyond being stars, retirees must win a Memorial Cup and a Stanley Cup – something Johnson did with the 2008 Chiefs and later the Tampa Bay Lightning and Whitney managed with Spokane’s squad in 1991 and then the Carolina Hurricanes.

Brett said the team is mulling a loosening of requirements, which Catton will likely need. He didn’t reach this year’s Memorial Cup tournament after bowing out in the WHL title round with three consecutive home losses and splitting the first two matchups on the road.

Medicine Hat in Game 4 was missing three top players, including projected 2026 NHL first overall draft pick McKenna – who pulled himself from the Game 3 warmup and missed the next two contests. But the Tigers didn’t blink, following up on a 6-0 Game 3 rout with an equally impressive 5-2 win in Game 4 ahead of clinching the title by a 4-2 score in a much closer Game 5.

As for the Kraken, they’d love Catton to embark this fall on eventually completing the Stanley Cup part. Just as with Kraken center Shane Wright three years ago, Catton, only 19, is too young for the AHL and would need to return to a major junior level he’s already dominating if he can’t stick with the NHL club.

That provides further Kraken incentive to keep Catton after training camp. Any next step is largely in Catton’s hands, though things certainly get tougher from here.

Catton and teammates faced their toughest on-ice challenge in the WHL final, having lived a rather charmed prior existence in which they often scored their way to success. Then, in just 24 hours in Games 3 and 4, they ran into a Tigers defensive wall that left their revved-up, sign-waving Chiefs home fans numbed into silence.

Those fans had packed David’s Pizza, across from the arena, hours before Game 3 decked out in Chiefs colors anticipating a Catton-fueled continuation of where the once-deadlocked series had left off in Alberta. Coming off that road split, Catton’s video game regular season numbers had continued with a league-leading 41 points in 17 playoff matchups. His three goals in the first two games in Medicine Hat led all series comers, including Tigers winger McKenna.

“We love Berkly,” Chiefs fan Sandie Cochrane, 19, said as she headed across to the arena in a Catton jersey. “And we want him to stay.”

But the ensuing Game 3 rout, with plenty of Chiefs alumni watching from a private suite -- including former Kraken forward Kailer Yamamoto -- put the pizzeria party on pause. The Chiefs had gone seven months between shutouts, while Catton was at 14 straight playoff games without being blanked on the scoresheet.

Catton acknowledged afterwards that the next night’s Game 4 to come was “the biggest one of the year” and perhaps his toughest hockey challenge yet.

“Big players are going to show up, and I think that’s the way you’ve got to look at it,” Catton said.

He agreed his prior experiences for Team Canada internationally at U18 tournaments, Kraken camp last fall and then last winter’s World Junior Hockey Championship had likely readied him mentally to meet the moment.

“You see NHL players and how they do things and try to bring that to our program here and just elevate it,” Catton said. “I think I’ve done a good job of that this year and gotten this program to a higher level.”

Alas, a full Game 4 resurgence wasn’t to be. After a Medicine Hat goal just 31 seconds in – the third time in four series games they’d scored in the opening minute – the Chiefs replied 18 seconds later and finally gave their fans a chance to erupt into their highly popular and rather unusual Italian folk dance goal celebration.

But that was their night’s highlight, as things slipped away for good in the middle period on three Medicine Hat power-play goals.

Catton finished with a secondary assist on a power-play goal with the Chiefs down 4-1 at the time. But Catton earlier that frame, had nearly changed the game’s trajectory when, with his team down only two goals, he laid a heavy forecheck on a Tigers’ defender behind the net, stole the puck and had a point-blank chance before his shot was stopped.

It's plays such as those the Kraken will be interested in. Spokane head coach Brad Lauer, who played 323 NHL games as a winger with the New York Islanders, Chicago Blackhawks, Ottawa Senators and Pittsburgh Penguins, has worked extensively with Catton on what to do when he doesn’t have the puck.

They are both from Saskatchewan – Lauer from Humboldt and Catton from Saskatoon – so they quickly dispensed with bonding formalities when Lauer was hired last summer and got down to business.

“When I talked to him, I said I’d been fortunate to work with some pretty good players in junior,” said Lauer, previously an NHL assistant coach as well with Winnipeg, Ottawa, Tampa Bay and Anaheim. “And you know a lot of guys can play in the NHL. But a lot of guys can’t stay in the NHL.”

With regards to Catton, he was talking mainly about improving the proverbial “200-foot game” and defensive responsibilities that make his center position so challenging. But a quality forecheck out of nowhere in the offensive zone also certainly qualifies as “away from the puck” activity that can potentially swing a huge game.

Catton, who models his play after similarly built NHL forwards Jack Hughes and Clayton Keller, has strengthened his legs all season by following a regimen set out in Toronto by Kraken fitness consultant Gary Roberts. It’s helped with Catton’s above-average speed and elusiveness, his teenage frame will rely on to navigate the highly physical NHL level.

Catton had headed to the morning skate prior to Game 4 and listened to messaging from Lauer about avoiding the temptation to try to win things all on his own.

“I talked to Berkly and he’s been in some big situations,” Lauer said. “He understands the big stage and the importance of game-by-game as we go through a big tournament or series.

“I said: ‘You learned a lot in the world juniors. And some of that stuff can be used in the locker room with teammates.’ ”

But the biggest thing, Lauer added, was Catton and teammates remembering hockey is “a team game” and not to overanalyze the prior night’s Game 3 defeat.

“I don’t need anyone to be Superman,” Lauer said. “I don’t need anyone trying to be someone who they’re not.”

Thing is, Catton has often donned a cape for the Chiefs. He scored 54 goals and added 62 assists last season in almost singlehandedly willing an undermanned Chiefs team into the first playoff round.

This past season, his 38 goals and 71 assists in 11 fewer games gave him 1.9 per contest compared to last season’s 1.7. And he had winger Cristall and his WHL-leading 132 points next to him in the season’s latter half to push himself and the Chiefs to levels beyond.

“To have elite players like that, it’s kind of neat to see,” Lauer said of Catton’s elevated game alongside Cristall. “As for what he needs at the next level, he’s going to need obviously a skillset forward, a winger, a guy who can skate with him and be able to make plays with him. More of a shooter-type guy.”

That’s because Catton tends to distribute the puck often, sometimes more than his coach would like. Lauer feels Catton could stand to be more “selfish” and just fire pucks at the net.

Catton had done just that in Game 2, spurring a four-goal Spokane outburst by potting two as the Chiefs turned a 1-0 deficit into a 4-1 lead.

But selfish typically isn’t in Catton’s vocabulary.

On the afternoon prior to pivotal Game 4, Catton, up from his afternoon nap, was stretching his legs against the wall of his billet family’s basement bedroom. Major junior players from out of town typically live with local families hired by the team.

“Oh yeah, big game tonight,” Catton said, briefly looking up with a smile as he continued his stretch.

Catton’s bed is in a room adjacent to good friend and Chiefs forward Cameron Parr, in the 5,000-square foot rambler home owned by billet parents Grant and Jennifer Barnes in a North Spokane neighborhood about a 25-minute drive from the arena. Three plaques on a common area wall between the player bedrooms contain the words “Grind” and “Hustle” and “Execution” and Catton seemed intensely focused on all three as he continued his pregame routine.

But to the Barnes family, Catton is just another teenager enjoying smoothies, e-bikes and a particular Japanese barbecue sauce he uses on most everything he eats.

“I judge everybody by how they treat my kids and our dogs,” Jennifer Barnes, 37, said. “And he’s just been great with both.”

Catton switched billet families this past season, so this was his first time living in the sprawling Barnes home. There is 2,500 square feet of upper space and another 2,500 in the basement where the family can flood their ample garage with a rink kit and turn it into an indoor skating facility.

Also, a 15,000-square-foot backyard is good for hosting pool parties and barbecues for some Chiefs teammates.

There are four dogs at the home as well, including a young Dachshund named Freddie that Catton dotes on regularly. He also gets into heated video chess matches with the couple’s son, Parker, 12, who taught him to play. And their daughter, Hadley, 8, often plays “shinny” hockey with Catton and her brother in the basement ahead of the trio watching movies together.

“He’ll tell us silly jokes at night, and we’ll start laughing and we won’t be tired,” she said.

His mother added: “He’s really good at getting my kids all hyped up right before bed.”

The day the Chiefs arrived back in Spokane after Game 2 and a 9 1/2 -hour bus ride from Alberta, Catton declared that he and Parr needed some “activation” to stretch their legs. They rode around for a bit on the e-bikes the couple keep at the home, then spotted their young son Parker hitting a baseball in the front yard and gathered up him with sister Hadley to head to a nearby field for an impromptu game.

Catton has a younger sister, Kinlee, 10, back home in Saskatchewan, so fitting in with the Barnes clan was normal.

Grant Barnes, 38, who runs a hard cider beverage company, said he and his wife don’t look at Catton as a hockey star as much as a rap-music blasting teen with heavy bass sounds often emanating from the basement.

“Sometimes, conversations get brought up like with relationships, or figuring out his bank account or parking tickets and how to deal with those,” he said.

On game days, Barnes will cook both players a full breakfast, then lunch upon their arrival back from morning skate. They’ll nap after that, followed by Parr showering first, then Catton, who’ll blast his rap music full throttle to get amped up for the game.

The decisive fifth game in which Medicine Hat clinched the championship could be the very last time Catton goes through that ritual at the Barnes family home. The family followed him to Seattle to watch his preseason games for the Kraken a year ago and plans to do the same come September.

For team owner Brett, Catton’s legacy is secured regardless of how the title round ended. Again, the sports voyage often isn’t linear and everybody goes through bumps and adversity as the Chiefs are now feeling.

And whatever Catton does from here, team owner Brett said it can’t erase what his past three seasons have meant.

“He’s our captain and we support him,” Brett said. “He’s been our leader. He’s led by example. He’s not a ‘rah-rah’ type, but he wants to win. And if he doesn’t come back, we’re in good hands due to his leadership.”