For Connor Logan, the hockey horizons are almost limitless, but he knows he has to stay on his game.
Just 17, the young Ditidaht First Nation member is playing his second season of Junior B hockey with the Peninsula Panthers of the Vancouver Island Junior Hockey League, and he has his sights set on earning a hockey scholarship, and then, perhaps, a career in the professional ranks.
To make that happen, however, Logan knows he has to keep improving his hockey skills, and even more critically, to apply himself scholastically.
“I knew that young; it’s been a priority for me,” he said. “I learned by Grade 5 that I would need good grades to go far in hockey and in life, to go to good schools and to be what I wanted to be.”
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At 16, Logan had to choose whether to play Major Midget against players his own age, or to pit himself against the big boys (up to 20) in Junior. The skill level is high in Major Midget, but Logan said Junior is a better preparation for the professional ranks.
“In Midget you play a perimeter game. In Junior, you’re not going to score goals from the outside; you have to go into the dirty areas,” he said.
Players in the Major Junior leagues like the Western Hockey League are not eligible for hockey scholarships at U.S. colleges. So many top prospects choose to play in the B.C. Hockey League to obtain one of the coveted NCAA "scholies."
That is the route Logan hopes to follow, and he is well aware that NCAA schools put a premium on academics. Hence the emphasis on grades, he said.
“Right now I think I have one B and the rest As,” he said. “I want to go into Kinesiology, so I'm making sure I have all the right courses. Eventually, I would like to be a strength and conditioning coach.”
Logan was born in Duncan, but now lives in the Victoria suburb of Saanich, where the Panthers play.
“We moved down here in my Bantam draft year,” he explained, adding that his hockey career was only part of the rationale for relocating the family. “My sister Hannah has a learning disability, and there is a school [Discovery School] here in Saanich, and it’s been a great help for her.”
He says he visits his home community of Nitinat fairly regularly – often to receive the annual awards and scholarships he is earning. While he tries to maintain a conscious connection with his Nuu-chah-nulth heritage, he said he hasn’t taken part in as many cultural activities as he would like.
But he doesn’t need any lessons on the importance of family, according to his grandmother, Geraldine Edgar-Tom.
“When my father, Joseph Edgar was dying, Connor was playing for the Island Elite (Peewee) team, and he was selected to play in the Challenge Cup in Vancouver. He visited my father, and he dedicated the upcoming season to him, and put his initials, JE, on his equipment.
“One day he said, ‘Hey grandma – look at this.’ He had all of his equipment laid out, all spotless, with my dad’s initials on it. I cried when I saw that.”
Thus equipped, Logan shot the lights out in Vancouver, was top scorer in the tournament and selected to the All-Star team.
But when the “can’t-miss” 16-year-old took to the ice against older, bigger and stronger players last season, he realized it wasn’t going to be easy.
“Last year, I walked in and thought I was going to be a Top 6/skill guy. It was sort of a wake-up call. I was pretty small, and it took about half a year for me to get the flow of the game. They're pretty big boys, and it's tough to get around them.”
Panther’s owner Peter Zebersky said Connor's experience was pretty normal for a 16-year-old.
“Connor is a really, really talented kid, but he was a lot smaller than he is now. He's about three inches taller and about 20 pounds heavier,” he said. “His first game was at Kerry Park. I asked him how he felt, and he said, ‘I’m terrified.’ And he played like he was terrified. He was horrible that first game. But he was a little better the next game, and a little better the next, and by the end of the year, he had really hit his stride.”
“Based on my experience last season, I wanted to get stronger over the summer, but still maintain my speed,” Logan said. “I gained about 15 pounds. Now, when I go into the corners, I don’t get pushed off the puck so easily.”
Up to the Midget level, players wear full face-shields, which tends to discourage fighting. But at the Junior level, fighting is an ever-present element of the game.
Logan said he has no inclination to shift from skill-player to scrapper, but sometimes the game dictates what happens.
“I got into one fight last year, but that was just sticking up for a teammate,” he said, casually dismissing the on-ice tilt.
Zebersky said the fight was a little more significant that Logan lets on.
“At the end of the year, a 19-year-old kid jumped him, and Connor absolutely cleaned up on him. Since then, he's been an absolute new player. Since the beginning of this season, he's been in the Top 5 scorers in the league.”
While some Junior B teams put a heavy emphasis on fighting, Zebersky said the Panthers organization doesn’t convert skilled players into grinders.
“I get the best skilled young players, and I get a few of the toughest 19- or 20-year-olds – two or three of them – and I tell them, ‘Don't fight. Play hockey. But if you have to fight to protect the young guys, you do it.’
“That's our trademark: We take the young players and treat them like gold. We develop them and move them on.”
While it sounds counterproductive for a team to develop young players, only to have them move on to the next level, Zebersky said that is the Panthers’ operating philosophy.
And it works. Along with a number of Panther alumni who have gone on to Junior A and the NCAA, Jamie and Jordie Benn now play for the National Hockey League Dallas Stars.
Last year, Jamie Benn was named captain of the NHL club. He played for the Panthers in 2005-06, then moved up to the BCHL Victoria Grizzlies, then to the WHL Kelowna Rockets after being drafted by Dallas, 127th overall.
Older brother Jordie took a longer route to the major leagues, playing two seasons with the Panthers, then three seasons with the BCHL Salsa/Grizzlies.
Undrafted, he started in the “low-minor” East Coast Hockey League, worked his way up to the NHL in stages.
Logan said he hopes to pursue the NCAA route to the professional ranks, rather than to jump into the minors at 20. University hockey is extremely competitive and provides an opportunity to play up to four years at the adult level. And, more importantly, you come out with an education.
“I would love to play hockey for a living. And you can look at a lot of players, like Martin St. Louis and Jonathan Toews, Chris Kunitz, and guys like that, who have developed their game through the NCAA. They turned into men before they went professional. You can look at younger guys, who are 19 or 20, trying to crack into the league, and it’s much harder.”
Last summer, Logan attended the main training camp of the Junior A Alberni Valley Bulldogs, but did not earn a spot on the team.
“It was actually my third camp. I attended two Prospects camps, but this was the main camp,” he said.
In Junior A, try-out players can earn a spot on the active roster, or they can be designated an Affiliate Player (AP) and sent down to Junior B, subject to call-up. For many young players, it is a ticket to earn a slot on the big club. And the Bulldogs have an excellent record of connecting players with NCAA scholarships.
“I thought I had a good camp, but maybe I wasn’t what they were looking for at the time. They APed kids out of the camp, but I wasn’t one of them. The Nanaimo [BCHL Clippers] guy was keeping in touch with me during the camp, though, and he thought I would be a good fit, so he APed me at the start of the year and got me out to a practice.”
On Nov. 15, the Peninsula Panthers paid a salute to First Nations youth, when they squared off against the Nanaimo Buccaneers. The previous evening, 13 members of the Panthers joined members of the Sidney RCMP and Central Saanich Police Service for a ballhockey game against youth from the five Wsanec Nations at the Tsawout First Nation Recreation Centre.
At Friday’s game, with dozens of Wsanec youth on hand as guests of the club, Logan took a ceremonial face-off against the Buccaneer’s Lynden Eddy, who is also of First Nations heritage.
Eddy opened the scoring for the Buccaneers in the first period. Going into the second period tied 1-1, Logan set up two goals for the Panthers, then, playing in heavy traffic on the power play, tucked one into the net to make it 4-1.
The Panthers won 4-2. Logan was selected First Star of the game. You can bet the Nanaimo Clippers are keeping close track of this 17-year-old scoring whiz. He is scheduled for a call-up against the Alberni Valley Bulldogs early in the New Year. The ’Dogs just may regret the decision not to give this young Ditidaht a place on their roster.
