While Evans will play for American Hockey League affiliate Coachella Valley if he doesn't stick with the big club to start the season, most of the team's 2021 and 2022 draft choices will return to their respective juniors or European teams if they don't make the Kraken roster. The NHL and Canadian Hockey League (comprised of the WHL, Ontario Hockey League and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League) have an agreement that players on CHL teams must be 20 or have played four junior seasons before they progress to the AHL.
Drafted players can in fact make the opening night roster - Wright is perhaps the most likely under-20 candidate in rookie camp to make the possible leap straight to the NHL. But if that is not the case, players return to the CHL for more seasoning and dominant time-on-ice for their teams.
Around the league, some 18-year-olds make opening NHL rosters who can then play up to nine NHL games and still be reassigned to their juniors teams. If an 18-year-old CHL player appears in 10 NHL games or more, it counts as a year of three-year entry level contract. If an 18-year-old CHL players appears in more than 40 NHL games as a rookie, it accrues as a year toward free agency.
While Evans is the lone second-rounder from the 2021 draft, fans attending rookie camp and upcoming days of training camp open to the public can watch four 2021 second-round draft choices in action: CHL forwards Jagger Firkus and David Goyette and two Finnish countrymen, 6-4, 217-pound wing Jani Nyman (played for Finland pro team last season) and goaltender Niklas Kokko (Finnish juniors in 2022-23).
Fans are likely to notice Firkus' offensive prowess, both his playmaking moves and above-average range of shots. Nyman is coming off a six-point performance (3G, 3A) in six games for silver-medal Finland in the 2022 World Junior Championship.
During this summer's development camp, Wright signed his three-year entry-level contract with a ceremonial signing at center ice to cap off the camp's final-day intrasquad games. Fellow prospects and forwards Ryan Winterton and Jacob Melanson signed their entry-level agreements too.
Winterton, 2021 third-rounder, scored 20 goals and 26 assists in half a regular season (he missed the first half recovering from a shoulder injury) before notching seven more goals and 12 assists in his Ontario Hockey League team's run to the championship game of the coveted elite juniors Memorial Cup this past summer.
For his part, Melanson scored 35 goals in the Quebec Major Junior league (plus four goals in eight playoff games) in a comeback season from breaking his collarbone not once but twice in the previous two seasons. The Kraken fifth-rounder plays a skilled and physical game, which fans at Kraken Community Iceplex will no doubt observe first-hand this month.
Come Thursday, the rookies will be joined by the Kraken's NHL and pro veterans. Two groups will take the ice in separate sessions (the second session at 12 noon will be live-streamed here at
www.nhl.com/kraken
. You can check the full training camp roster here (players attending both rookie camp Monday and Tuesday and training camp are listed with an asterisk).
