Defenseman prospect motivated following snubs in juniors, by national team
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OTTAWA — Carter Yakemchuk said he didn’t know what it was like to push through hardship in hockey until last season.
The No. 7 selection in the 2024 NHL Draft nearly made the Ottawa Senators out of training camp last fall when he had five points (two goals, three assists) in three preseason games.
Instead, the 19-year-old defenseman was returned to Calgary of the Western Hockey League for his fourth and final season of junior hockey. The consolation, he thought, would be an invitation to Canada’s National Junior Team Selection Camp and an opportunity to potentially play in the 2025 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship, which was being held in Ottawa.
But come December, Yakemchuk was left off the camp roster. And no one at Hockey Canada even called to deliver the disappointing news.
“Getting sent home from [Senators camp] and then obviously the disappointment of the world junior team, that was the first real big adversity I faced in my career,” Yakemchuk said at Senators development camp in July. “Learn from it. … At the end of the day, my goal is to play in the NHL, and it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to get there. It was an eye-opener.”
After Yakemchuk got radio silence from the national governing body, Ottawa general manager Steve Staios picked up the phone to reassure his top prospect.
“He reached out and he said that it doesn’t change what this organization thinks of me as a player,” Yakemchuk said. “And that I can use it as motivation to keep getting better every single day.”
So he turned around and embraced the challenge, believing 2024-25 could still be the most important season of his junior career. He had 49 points (17 goals, 32 assists) and a WHL career-high plus-6 rating in 56 regular-season games, and led Calgary to its first playoff series victory since 2019.
Yakemchuk totaled 180 points (70 goals, 110 assists) in 245 WHL games, including a WHL career-high 71 points (30 goals, 41 assists) in 66 games in 2023-24.
“The main focus for me was my defending and being able to defend at the next level,” Yakemchuk said. “I don’t think I had the best year point-wise (last season), but I think overall my game took a really big step.”
Senators amateur scout Andrew Gordon, part of the on-ice staff at development camp, concurred.
“A lot of the areas we wanted ‘Yak’’s game to evolve, it doesn’t show up on the scoresheet,” Gordon said. “When the puck’s on Yak’s stick, there’s no question what he can do, and I think that’s always going to be a strength, so we were trying to sure up the other areas of his game and make sure he’s able to compete in the corners, defensively, off the rush, improve his feet and just gap control, things like that, where he’s going to have to face some pretty quick guys at the next level. We think he’s more ready for that now than he was a year ago.”
Despite Ottawa’s seven one-way contracts on defense this season, Yakemchuk will be given a genuine shot at cracking its roster, and at the very least, his professional hockey career will begin, either in the NHL or with Belleville, the Senators’ American Hockey League affiliate .
“He’s a high pick that we have very high expectations for,” Gordon said. “And like we say, we have to make sure that he’s mentally ready for the road that he’s about to go on. Not everyone steps in and plays 20 minutes [per game] in the NHL right away, especially not in his position. So whether he starts in the American league or whether he starts up, like, last year his training camp was pretty impressive, and if he does the same thing, I think he’ll make a hard decision for the guys in management.
“But no matter where he is, we know the direction he’s going and we know where we want him to end up. It’s just a matter of bracing him for where the road is going to take.”
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