The future looks bright for the Yorkton Harvest of the Saskatchewan Midget AAA Hockey League.
Following showing promise last year with a fifth place finish under Jeff Odgers, they have a playoff quality team again this season with Dan Cross as the new bench boss. And looking down the community's pipeline, it should only get better from here.
It's a big jump from 'AA' bantam to 'AAA' midget, but all indications are Carson and Mckenzie Welke have bright futures in the SMAAAHL. The twins have dominated offensively in their second year of bantam for the Yorkton UCT Terriers, combining for 20 goals and 38 points in just nine games.
Two years down the road, the Harvest will probably have their best crop of first-year hometown players in quite some time. Carson Miller is regarded as one of the best 13-year-old scorers in Western Canada by most WHL scouts. All signs, albeit it's a tad earlier, point to him being a first round pick in the 2015 bantam draft. Keenan and Kaeden Taphorn, another set of twins, also have shinned in their first-year bantam seasons. Like Miller, they have the potential to be impact players with the Harvest in their rookie seasons.
Cross is fully aware of the talent in the Yorkton pipeline and hopes to see them in Harvest sweaters in the future.
"I want to see those players in our program," said Cross on Miller and the Welke and Taphorn twins. "They have played really well in bantam and have a lot of potential. It's good to see young Yorkton players doing well at such a young age."
Yorkton Regional High School's Hockey Canada program, which just started this year, should benefit the Harvest's depth. It will not only improve players' strides and speed, but it should also boost their strength and hockey smarts. Getting on the ice a couple more times a week and doing off-ice training might not seem like much, but it could ultimately be the difference in cracking 'AAA' midget in first year of eligibility rather than in the second attempt.
"The program has been going really well so far," said Cross, who also teaches the Hockey Canada course at YRHS. "They do on-ice training one day then dry land the next. It's a great opportunity for players to get on the ice more often and take steps forward in their games."
It goes without saying that it will always be a challenge for the Harvest to recruit some of the high-calibre talents. The Notre Dame program's reputation is enough to have players flocking to it and the Saskatoon Contacts and Prince Albert Mintos' strong track records make them enticing teams to play for.
Nonetheless, with a consistent winning record and the Hockey Canada program offered at YRHS, they should have more selling points for the foreseeable future than they did in prior years. In addition, playing for the Harvest is at least $10,000 a year cheaper than playing in Notre Dame, not taking into account scholarships, and it's around a grand less than the big-city 'AAA' teams in Saskatoon and Regina. Moreover, the quality of players going onto the Western Hockey League from the Harvest is growing significantly. Just in the past five years, the Harvest can take partial credit for developing Kelowna Rockets blueliner Damon Severson, who was selected in the second round of the 2012 draft by the New Jersey Devils, and Seattle Thunderbirds defenceman Ethan Bear, who is regarded as a promising prospect for the 2015 NHL draft class.
