Now that it’s official, the Penticton Vees will join the Western Hockey League as an expansion team next season, and the Prince George Cougars know where they stand as they prepare to welcome a sixth team into the BC Division.
The WHL is also seeking an owner to establish an expansion team in Chilliwack for the 2026-27 season, which would result in a 24-team league.
The addition of the Vees gives the Cougars another provincial opponent, located an eight-hour drive away. Currently, the closest WHL team to Prince George is six hours away in Kamloops, with the Kelowna Rockets a seven-hour drive from PG. The Cougars’ other BC Division opponents are in Langley and Victoria.
“It will change our travel schedule a bit, but not very much,” said Cougars president John Pateman. “They still want to do a more balanced schedule, so we’ll still be going to the U.S. as many times as we normally do.
“It’s always nice to have teams close together. Most people want to play Fridays and Saturdays, and now Vancouver (which plays in Langley) has a preference to play on Sundays, so that makes it easier to do a Kelowna-Penticton-Vancouver kind of thing. That’s not a bad trip, actually.”
The league will hold an expansion draft on Wednesday, May 7, and none of the existing 22 teams will lose more than one player in the draft. All drafted players must be 17 or older. Each team will submit a list of 16 players from their 50-player protected list who will be off-limits to the Vees in the draft.
“If you look at our roster this year, we’ll lose the three 20-year-olds and probably two of the 19-year-olds, so most of this year’s roster will be protected,” said Pateman. “It will be one player.”
The Vees will also participate in the WHL Prospects Draft on May 7, as well as the US Priority Draft and CHL Import Draft. For the Prospects Draft, Pateman said the Vees will be slotted close to the middle of the draft order. For the other 22 teams, the draft order is based on the regular-season finish. The Cougars finished seventh overall and will likely pick 16th.
The Vees have already started recruiting a 15-player list, which will expand to a 50-player list on May 7.
Penticton will pay a franchise fee of $15-16 million to the WHL, a portion of which will be distributed to the other 22 teams. In addition, the Vees must pay the Kelowna Rockets between $2-2.5 million in compensation because they are within the Rockets' territorial rights.
“I would suspect Penticton’s going to pay, between Kelowna and the league, $15-18 million,” said Pateman. “From my understanding, they’ve got some pretty good concessions on how their lease will work, and I don’t think anybody gets into it to become a big money-maker.”
The WHL team in Penticton will play in the city-owned 5,000-seat South Okanagan Events Centre, built in 2007-08 by Western Industrial Contracting, the Prince George-based company co-owned by Pateman and Ray Fortier, both part of the Cougars ownership group.
The Penticton group is headed by Graham Fraser, who has been the majority owner of the BCHL Vees since June 2008. Also involved is former New York Rangers goalie Mike Richter and Winnipeg Jets forward Mark Scheifele, who was billeted by Fraser when he played junior hockey in the OHL for the Barrie Colts.
Fred Harbinson will continue in his roles as head coach and general manager of the Vees, a position he has held since 2007.
“They’ve run a successful operation,” said Pateman. “Graham Fraser is really the guy who brought Ironman (triathlons) to North America in the mid-90s, and they’ve had good teams and good support. Fred Harbinson has been a great recruiter of players over the years, but our league is different—it has a draft.”
Fraser plans to move their BCHL team to another city. The Vees are one of the flagship franchises of the 21-team BC Hockey League and have won the Fred Page Cup championships in two of the past three seasons. Fraser led the push for the BCHL to break away from Hockey Canada in May 2023 to circumvent territorial restrictions that prevented players from other provinces from signing with BCHL teams.
The league changed its business model to become a more elite college-prep development league, feeding players to U.S. colleges. However, when the NCAA changed its eligibility rules last September to allow players with major junior hockey experience to accept scholarships at U.S. colleges for next season, that recruiting advantage was negated.
This led to a flurry of junior A players jumping to CHL teams well into the current season. In Prince George, five of the Spruce Kings' best players signed with Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League teams, and every other BCHL team lost high-profile recruits.
Chilliwack has been without a WHL team since 2011, when the Chilliwack Bruins moved to Victoria to become the Royals, five years after they started in Chilliwack as an expansion team.
The Chilliwack Chiefs plan to play one more season in Chilliwack under current owner Moray Keith, then move to allow the WHL team to take over. Abbotsford is a potential location for the Chiefs, with the Vancouver Canucks rumoured to be buyers of the team to share facilities with the AHL’s Abbotsford Canucks.
To entice a franchise owner, the WHL reported that the City of Chilliwack is prepared to spend $3.7 million on improvements to the 5,000-seat Chilliwack Coliseum, including new NHL-standard boards, and upgrades to the scoreboard and lighting system.
Similar to the territorial arrangement between Penticton and Kelowna, the Chilliwack team would be obligated to pay a similar fee to the Vancouver Giants.
“Chilliwack is a growing community, and the league has long thought it would be an attractive spot,” said Pateman.
The Cougars have one of the most punishing travel schedules, and having a sixth BC team in Chilliwack would help reduce travel costs, Pateman said.
The current WHL draft schedule for 2025-26 has the Cougars staying in the United States for 17 nights and spending 48 nights in BC hotel rooms. Pateman says it costs the team an average of $6,000 for each overnight stay on the road.
“We’re up to 65 nights, while some teams are as low as 15. That’s the major disadvantage we have,” said Pateman. “Certainly, this year the U.S. dollar was a real killer.”
