Behind Berkly Catton, one of the 2024 NHL Draft's best skaters and prospects (2024)

Jordan Trach has “had some good groups” work with him through Trach Power Skating in Saskatoon over the years.

His NHL clients have included names like Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Brayden Schenn, Ethan Bear, Jake DeBrusk, Braden Schneider and Connor Zary. He’s got others, like Brayden Yager, Riley Heidt, Tanner Howe and Roger McQueen, on NHL paths.

And yet everyone from the area is always amazed at just how much one of his clients stands out above the rest.

That client is Berkly Catton.

Despite his 5-foot-10 and 170-pound listing, Catton is a potential top-10 pick in the 2024 NHL Draft — and, uncommonly for a player that size, a center. NHL Central Scouting has him No. 8 on their list of North American skaters eligible for the draft. He was the No. 1 pick in the 2021 WHL Bantam Draft and has lived up to that billing.

At 16, he captained Canada Red to silver at the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge and was named to the tournament all-star team with 12 points in seven games.

At 17, he played as an underager at U18 worlds and captained Canada to Hlinka gold, leading the tournament in goals (8) and points (10) in five games.

This season, he wore the ‘C’ for a third time in his age group at the CHL/NHL Top Prospects Game and finished fourth in the WHL in points with 116 and third in goals with 54.

The skating has been at the center of all of that.

“His acceleration from slow speeds to high speeds is extremely good,” Trach said on a recent phone call. “I think his top end is very good but his acceleration is another level. And I’m not saying from a dead stop to going, I’m saying from a gliding speed to a sprint. It’s exceptional. And his ability to gain speed in tight areas 3-4 feet from the boards, spin out, and take a guy’s hip and be gone, is also exceptional. He’s shifty, he’s able to turn in very tight areas and escape out of tough situations, but then secondly where he really pulls himself away is that pull-away speed, those first few steps coming out of movements.”

Ask Trach when he began working with Catton and he laughs. It’s been a long time. He guesses he was 7 or 8 years old.

He was also “a natural right off the start.”

“He was always a smaller guy and his skating and his speed was always his strongest suit,” Trach said. “It made working with him great because even at a young age you were able to start working on much more advanced things and the little parts of his skating as opposed to literally learning how to skate properly first.”

Stefan Legein, his associate coach with Spokane this season, calls him an “incredible skater” not just without the puck but especially with it, which he says is even more important.

“He’s got good separation speed but the edge work that he displays when he has the puck, he can really toy with guys and get them to come out of defensive zone coverage and get them to open up spots for his teammates or for himself to attack,” Legein said. “It’s really impressive to watch him move around the ice. He’s able to build speed when he has the puck. He’s able to change speeds and get on his outside edges and just really make guys do what he wants them to do with his feet.”

Blaine Whyte, who founded Pro Sport Rehab and Fitness in Saskatoon and has trained Catton for a few years now, says the skating connects back to his athleticism.

In a group in the gym that also includes McQueen, Heidt and Yager, as well as Kevin Korchinski, he stands out in that way as well.

“He’s fairly naturally powerful as a kid. His strength base just needs to increase, especially his leg strength and getting bigger through his legs will be important for him because that drives power. He’s a very athletic kid, no question.”

But there’s another element, to Whyte, that stands out even above and beyond his speed and athleticism.

“He’s one of those guys who just has this drive in him that’s pretty unique,” Whyte said, chuckling as if it were an understatement. “He’s fairly small in stature but what he lacks in stature he makes up for in compete I think honestly. He’s a very driven kid. And he’s quick, for sure. But what stands out is how competitive he really is on and off the ice. He always wants to be lifting more and going harder than even he should be but that’s just the way he is.”

He saw that firsthand a few years ago when Catton was dealing with a “really significant” injury.

“He had a pretty major injury but he was just battling through it because that’s just the way that he is. I think he has learned to step back a little when you need to. You definitely have to encourage him to rest,” Whyte said. “But that’s just the kind of drive that he has. He has had to figure out what’s best for him. He has definitely had to deal with some stuff which is unfortunate but also a good thing at a young age because you’ve got to figure out how to deal with it.”

Trach calls him an “amazing kid” who is driven by an “exceptional work ethic.”

“I’ve never seen him cut anyone down to put himself ahead, he’s just willing to work harder than the next person to try to put himself ahead,” Trach said. “He has been salt of the earth to work with.”

But he’s also just “very, very serious.” Almost obsessively so. He’s the player who, when Trach is working with someone else, is at the back of the line in his own little space working on whatever he thinks he didn’t do well in the previous drill.

“When he’s on the ice he has always been game face even since he was a little kid. He always wants more. He’s never, ever satisfied. I heard a quote about how (Sidney) Crosby plays like there’s a league above the NHL that he wants to play in and that just seems to be what Berk is always doing,” Trach said. “He doesn’t have time to horse around. Every time that he’s on the ice is valuable time to get better. He does not want anyone to be better than him.”

This season was Legein’s first coaching him and he’s already prepared to call him a “special kid.” Legein, who ran Spokane’s power play this season, could see it in the way he saw the game.

Legein says he’s not your typical 17- or 18-year-old in that “there’s nothing that’s really a knock on him in any way.”

Good teammate? Check. Easy to talk to? Check. Hard on himself without ever putting that on anybody else? Check.

He just does everything the right way, according to Legein.

And that’s without getting into the actual on-ice talent of it all. Trach believes the rookie success had by Zach Benson, another “smaller, shifty guy” has helped his draft stock this year.

NHL Central Scouting describes his game as follows: “A highly intelligent player that generates a lot of scoring chances and leads his team in scoring. Has excellent vision to go along with his high-end skill set. NHL skater with an explosive first step that allows him to evade checking and pull away from defenders. Plays an up-tempo game and is very clever at controlling the pace of the play while creating time and space to make plays. Can contribute in all three zones with his smarts and awareness. More of a play maker than a scorer, but he has a good release and accurate shot to beat goalies.”

There were nights this season, Legein said, where he couldn’t help but sit back and enjoy the show.

He points to one weekend set against the top-ranked Prince George Cougars as one of the best examples. The Chiefs took three of four points, Catton played almost 30 minutes in both games, and he was the best player on the ice by a wide margin.

“The skills he has to execute what he sees, it’s pretty incredible. You don’t get the fortune of coaching too many kids like him in junior,” Legein said. “He’s dynamic enough to be a top-five (pick), he’s just a little small. He’s something to watch. He’s an elite player — like, elite player.”

Despite his size, Legein is also a big believer in Catton’s ability to stick at center in the NHL.

For starters, he won 53.4 percent of the 1,355 faceoffs he took this season, winning the seventh-most draws in the league.

“That’s just his compete level to just want the puck,” Legein said of his proficiency on draws. “He wants it bad and he knows he can get it off the draw so he really digs in. And that’s against 19-to-20-year-old first-line centers. He doesn’t get many shifts against guys who aren’t at the top of the league.”

But it starts with his skating and the way it opens up as a centerman, his ability to “use both sides of the rink and distribute and build speed.”

“He enamours you when he catches a puck low in the D-zone. And then to watch him come up the middle of the ice, it’s hard to say ‘let’s box him in by putting him up against the wall,’” Legein said. “His lateral mobility, his peripheral vision is incredible, so he can really draw defenders in, even when he’s in the neutral zone, when he’s in the middle of the ice. You start pairing him with some wingers who have some speed and power and can really shoot the puck and you’re probably going to get 8-10 chances a game with the way that he draws guys into him and can skate with it.”

Though his play away from the puck “still needs to come,” it is coming.

“There’s really not one guy who is as gifted as Berkly offensively and has the puck as much as he does who doesn’t need to work on his play away from the puck. But he’s committed to it, he wants to get better,” Legein said. “And he has tough matchups every night where there’s a lot going on for him down low. But he’s working hard at it and he’ll get better, and he’s continuing to get better because that’s just the kind of kid he is. He works on his deficiencies, he doesn’t just fall back on what he’s good at. People said he needed to work on his shot and he doubled down by having 54 goals this year. I trust that he’s going to do everything he needs to, to become the kind of player he wants to be.”

Some of that progress could be seen on Spokane’s penalty kill this year. Catton led the WHL with seven short-handed goals this past season.

“He’s playing in the future a little bit because he’s so cerebral. And then his stride, he breaks away from a guy and it’s game over,” Legein said.

Earlier this year, shortly after coming off the ice at the Avenir Centre where he’d just completed the CHL/NHL Top Prospects Game’s testing, Catton was grumbling about an edge on one of his blades that was bugging him.

He’d finished 16th among the 35 skaters tested — a group of the top prospects eligible for the draft — and top 10 in three of the 10 tests (third in transition agility, sixth in weave agility with a puck, and ninth in transition agility with a puck) but he called his results “not great.”

He expected more of himself. A lot more. To be the best at it.

“I’m kind of making excuses but it’s testing, it’s not a real game,” he said.

The twists and turns, he said, are supposed to be his bread and butter. He has honed them with Trach, and says he practically lives on the backyard rink his dad, Christopher, a teacher, builds in the winter (his mom Desrae is also a teacher and he wears No. 27 for her birthday). Growing up, his dad used to set up little courses for him to practice his turning and stopping. They were always out there.

He’s got the genes, too (his mom’s cousin is former longtime NHLer Cory Sarich). The oldest of three with two younger sisters, athletics runs in the family, with his youngest sister, 10, big into hockey and his other sister, a year younger than him, big into volleyball. When he’s not playing hockey, he’s playing wiffle ball, golf or basketball.

But he has worked and worked on his skating and he always expects it to be there for him.

He describes himself as smart, competitive, elusive, detailed and focused. When NHL scouts have asked him for a player he models his game after, he has used Jack Hughes: “He’s not the biggest guy but he plays with so much speed and he’s always pushing the pace and he’s a true competitor.”

The skating isn’t all that he is, though, either.

As the son of two teachers, school has always been a priority for him — and still is. “It’s always been get your school done and then hockey. That’s the way I was brought up,” he said.

When he was younger, he considered the NCAA path for that reason before eventually being pulled to Spokane.

Ask him for his scouting report and he says he’s more than meets the eye as a player.

“I think I’m also strong on the puck for my size and I don’t really lose many puck battles so I think that’s probably one of my stronger areas as well,” Catton said. “The defensive side has been something I’ve been wanting to work on. I think I’m becoming more of a 200-foot player but I think it’s just finding ways to get the puck more through the neutral zone and down low — just putting myself in a little better spots sometimes because I think when I do have the puck, I’m a really dangerous player.”

But he can’t help but come back to his skating, either.

“I find myself not getting pinned a lot just because of my agility,” he said, chuckling when reminded he’d just brought up his skating.

With reporting in Moncton, N.B.

(Top photo courtesy WHL Images)