It was somewhat fitting that Riley Heidt came out of the dressing room in bare feet to stand on the unfinished concrete floor at CN Centre for what might be his final media interview as a member of the Prince George Cougars.
The stark, cold reality of a job left incomplete — a 4–2 loss to the Portland Winterhawks in Game 7 on Monday that ended the Cougars’ season — was still fresh in the 19-year-old captain’s mind. With that came the realization that his time playing hockey in Prince George is quite likely finished as he embarks on a pro career with the Minnesota Wild.
The Cougars put up an incredible fight trying to prevent their second series loss to the Winterhawks in as many years, overcoming a 3–1 deficit with convincing wins in the next two games. But for now, everyone is still trying to dissect what they could have done differently to get over that Game 7 hump.
“I couldn’t be more proud of the group, the way we found a way to bounce back, but at the end of the day you fall short by a matter of inches and it wasn’t good enough,” Heidt said.
“This group came so far from the start of the year to now. But at the end of the day it wasn’t good enough. It’s going to sting for a long time.”
Heidt joined the Cougars family in April 2020 when he was selected second overall, behind Connor Bedard, in the WHL Prospects Draft. He came to a team in retooling mode coming out of the pandemic, and with Heidt as one of the key building blocks, the Cougars climbed from basement dwellers to contenders for the conference crown.
“When I was 15 coming here, I was leaving my family at such a young age, and I came to this organization and I can’t believe how well I fit in here and how fast the time went by,” said Heidt. “It’s a first-class organization and I thank every person here — the coaching staff, my teammates, trainers, my billets — everything has been exceptional and I can’t believe it’s over. Everyone says junior (hockey) is the funnest time of your career, and it truly has been.”
Heidt played five seasons with the Cats and set team records for career points (370) and assists (254). He has been a fan favourite ever since he arrived as a highly touted kid from Saskatoon. He led the Cougars in scoring this season with 90 points, including 31 goals, and was even more productive in the playoffs with five goals and nine points in six games. He’ll always relish those celebratory leaps into the glass after a goal — especially at CN Centre with a sellout crowd watching.
“It’s everything. You go back two or three years ago, there weren’t as many people coming out, and this city really grew and rallied back. Our team’s become a top contender every year now and it’s super special,” he said.
“When you can have that support day in, day out, it means the world to the players. When you’re in the game, a lot of the noise really goes away — at least for me — but just to see, when you’re coming out before O Canada, I still get goosebumps talking about it. The atmosphere is so special. It’s like you’re in a totally different world for a couple of hours. I’m just shocked that it’s obviously over.”
Heidt joined the team full time in March 2021 in the midst of the COVID lockdowns, playing an abbreviated 25-game schedule in a B.C. Division bubble. At that time, Prince George did not have the best reputation among the hockey fraternity as a desirable place to play.
But the willingness of Cougars ownership to provide the resources needed by head coach and general manager Mark Lamb, associate coach Jim Playfair, the scouts and the rest of the staff to turn the team around and make it one of the league’s premier franchises did not go unnoticed by Heidt and the other players who got in on the ground floor of that rebuild.
“To come to something that wasn’t winning and didn’t have a good so-called rep before, and be here now to see what we’ve done — with the staff we’ve got and the players over the years — is truly special,” said Heidt. “I think this organization’s changed forever, and for the good. I think there’s going to be a lot of good things here in the future. It’s going to be a place, and is a place, where people want to come.”
Heidt proved extremely durable in his time as a Cougar. He missed just eight games over his first four seasons. This year, despite breaking his jaw in November — which required it to be wired shut — he missed only two games. He missed six more in December while away from the Cougars trying out for Canada’s world junior team, and he sat out Game 4 of the playoffs while serving a suspension.
All told, the Cougars, under the care of athletic therapist Dave Adolph, lost just 20 man-games to injury — a remarkably low total considering the nature of the sport.
Assuming Heidt begins his pro career next season, at least six other Cougars won’t be back. That includes his longtime buddy Koehn Zimmer and the other overagers, Viliam Kmec and Borya Valis. There’s a logjam of seven 2005-born players on this year’s team, including Heidt, and WHL rules allow for only three 20-year-olds on each roster.
That means the Cougars will have to decide who among forwards Ben Riche, Matteo Danis, Evan Groening, Van Eger, defencemen Bauer Dumanski and Alexey Chichkin, and goalie Cooper Michaluk will be part of that trio next fall.
The cupboards certainly won’t be bare — not with standout sophomores like goalie Josh Ravensbergen and right-winger Terik Parascak both expected back. Up front, there’s Jett Lajoie, Aiden Foster, Kayden Lemire, Lee Shurgot and Patrick Sopiarz, along with young defencemen Carson Carels, Corbin Vaughan, Arseni Anisimov, Fraser Leonard, Leith Hunter and Dermot Johnston.
If Heidt makes it in Minnesota or with their AHL affiliate in Iowa, road trips will mean more planes and fewer highway kilometres. As much as the Cougars get penalized for their isolation — the northernmost team in the WHL, with their closest opponent six hours away — Heidt said those long bus rides brought some of his most cherished memories.
“For how much time our team spends on the bus, it’s a place you’ve got to learn to love, and we’ve got a lot of funny stories and a lot of fun times. That’s where we kind of meshed,” said Heidt.
