For the second time in five years, the Regina Pats have won the right to draft first overall in the Western Hockey League’s Prospects Draft and once again, a highly touted prospect is an option for the rebuilding franchise.
Much like 2020 when Connor Bedard was anticipated to be (and was) the top pick in the WHL draft, it is now Maddox Schultz’s turn, a 15-year-old top prospect from Regina with almost as much hype as Bedard.
Schultz has been guaranteed by many to be taken first overall by the Pats on May 7. The 15-year-old Regina Pat Canadians forward led the SMAAAHL in scoring with 93 points in 44 games at 14 and has led the team to the Telus Cup that will begin April 21 in B.C.
Regina Pats general manager Alan Millar hasn’t announced publicly that the team will draft Schultz just yet and recognizes that the draft class for 2025 is a strong one. Millar said the first people to know who the number one pick is, will be the player himself along with his family.
“We’ve had a real focus on the top four or five players in the draft for awhile now,” Millar said. “Just understanding where we could fall in the standings and you never know how the lottery balls [were] going to drop, so we have a real good feel on the group, I think this draft has good depth and real good speed and skill up front, some bigger guys on the backend,” Millar said.
Along with the first overall pick, the Pats will have one more first round selection and three more in the second round.
“There’s going to be a lot of focus on the number one pick as expected, but we’ve got a process here and it’s a big draft for us, we pick one, 23rd, 26th, 27th, 46th, so there’s a lot of work to be done between now and May 7,” Millar said.
Thanks to a 16-44-5-3 record in 2024-25, the Pats had the second-best odds of winning Thursday’s lottery at 23.8 per cent, behind only the Edmonton Oil Kings who had the Moose Jaw Warrior’s first round pick, thanks to a massive three team trade in December of 2023.
When it comes to the attention Schultz has received, Millar says it’s well deserved.
“Rightfully so, everyone is going to talk about Maddox. He’s a very good young player, obviously the year that he had as a young player leading the under 18 loop in scoring, and we can’t talk about Maddox without talking about the run the Pat C’s are on with the impressive showing they had at western regionals,” Millar said, adding that Schultz is one of the top players in the draft.
“We get it, there will be a lot of focus in terms of the player that he is, the person that he is, the fact that he is a Regina kid, and like I said we’ll go through our process here and with the timing, the first people that I’ll tell who’s going to be the number one pick will be the young man and his family and we’ll play that out over the next few weeks.”
Whoever the Pats select first overall on May 7, Millar says it’s always been an honour as a general manager to notify a player he will be drafting them before his peers.
“I’ve had the honour of doing it once before and it was a pretty good player by the name of Steven Stamkos way back in the OHL days,” he said.
If the Pats do what many have deemed the obvious and select Schultz, he will be eligible to play 34 WHL games in 2025-26. Schultz elected not to pursue exceptional status that would allow him to play full time at 15, but the Western Canadian Development Model allows Schultz to play half of a season because he played up an age group in minor hockey.
