Photo credit: Steve Dunsmoor

By Regan Bartel

Eyeing future success with bold moves

Rockets hoping for lottery luck

Mar 28, 2025 | 6:00 AM

The Kelowna Rockets had little in the way of luck this season. 

Season-ending injuries to leading goal scorer Tij Iginla, captain Max Graham, and Michael Cicek, who was having a career year until a freak play saw a skate blade slit his forearm, made it a challenging season for the Rockets. With only 18 wins, they finished dead last in the Western Conference standings, posting a franchise-worst 42 points. 

However, there is a silver lining to a season that showed some promise but ultimately ended in disappointment: the chance to make a splash at May’s WHL Prospects Draft. Finishing with the third-fewest points of the 22 teams has given the Rockets a high draft pick, which could become even more valuable if a little luck comes their way. 

The draft lottery gives the six teams that missed the playoffs in the 2024-2025 season the chance to move up or down by two spots, depending on where the lottery balls fall. For the Rockets, the best-case scenario would be moving up two spots and securing the first overall pick. 

“If we were to win the lottery, we would hang onto that pick,” said Kelowna Rockets general manager Bruce Hamilton, speaking with RocketFAN. “The other picks, likely, will be in play [for trades], so that will give us two or three first-round picks to work with.” 

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Maddox Schultz, a 15-year-old from Regina, is the odds-on favorite to be chosen first overall. Schultz posted 43 goals and 50 assists for 93 points in 44 games this season with the U18 Regina Pat Canadians. 

Currently, the first overall pick belongs to the Edmonton Oil Kings, who acquired it through a trade with the Moose Jaw Warriors. In that deal, the Oil Kings sent former Kelowna Rockets forward Rilen Kovacevic and European defenseman Vojtech Port to Moose Jaw in December 2023. Kovacevic was later traded to the Prince Albert Raiders, where he will spend his 20-year-old season, facing off against his former Edmonton teammates in a first-round playoff series. 

“We aren’t going to be in a position of starting all over again,” Hamilton added, referring to the potential trade of their own first-round pick and the one they received from the Spokane Chiefs in the Andrew Cristall deal. “We are fortunate because of the depth from last year’s draft. It’s really deep. We feel we have eight or nine players from that group who can play.” 

One of those players is towering defenseman Owen Hayden, selected 9th overall in 2024. Hayden may be the only 16-year-old on the Rockets’ Memorial Cup-hosting team in 2025-2026, after the team iced four 16-year-olds this past season. 

The draft is typically held on May 9th, one day after the US Priority Draft. 

“The makeup of our team is going to be older guys,” Hamilton said, emphasizing that a host team’s success depends on its veteran players. “To play in the Memorial Cup, you have to have a lot of 19-year-olds.” 

The team will have nine 19-year-olds on its roster heading into training camp, but four or five of them could find it hard to make the roster. 

“I think if we add six or seven players… we should be an older team for sure. We aren’t going to be trading for 17 or 18-year-olds. We will be trading for 19 and 20-year-olds.” 

Hamilton also confirmed that no less than two European players will be added to the roster during this summer’s CHL Import Draft. Teams will be allowed to dress three European players this season, and the Rockets hope to find impact players with the same pedigree as Gabriel Szturc, Pavel Novak, and most recently Jakub Stancl. 

“The goaltending situation, obviously, with the trade we made with Lethbridge, the player coming here is significant, and he’s going to be the goalie, and he’s going to be given the opportunity.” 

That player is highly regarded American-born Harrison Boettiger, acquired in the Caden Price deal with the Lethbridge Hurricanes. Boettiger, 17, was the Hurricanes’ first pick, 4th overall, in the 2022 U.S. Priority Draft, and played this past season with the USA Hockey National Team Development Program. 

“The two guys here, we will see what they do at training camp,” Hamilton added, referring to returnees Jake Pilon and Rhett Stoesser, who will join Carter Kowalyk and Andrew Petruk as the three overage players. 

“We will be making some moves at the WHL Prospects Draft [in May] because we have so much capital now,” Hamilton added. 

“We have a good idea of what we want…we have a significant shopping list. We have lots of assets.”