Dauphin’s Forrest Karlson was drafted into the Western Hockey League, last week.
The 15-year-old was selected in the fifth round, 98th overall by the Red Deer Rebels, one of 33 Manitobans taken in the draft.
Karlson played the last two seasons with the Pilot Mound U15 Hockey Academy of the Canadian Sport School Hockey League.
In his first season in Pilor Mound, Karlson tallied seven goals and 15 points in 24 games. In 27 games this past season, he scored 18 goals and recorded 24 assists for 42 points. He added four goals and two assists in three playoff games.
Karlson was “super excited” to be drafted by Red Deer.
“I heard great things about the organization. And I have some close family friends close to Red Deer, so I was pretty excited to be close to them, too,” he said, adding he was confident he would be selected at some point.
Karlson had been talking with scouts over the course of the season and knew of four teams interested in drafting him.
“So I was pretty confident I was going to go that day,” he said.
Red Deer called Karlson after the draft to welcome him to the team.
“It’s a pretty good staff there. They were pretty friendly,” he said.
Karlson chose to play at Pilot Mound Hockey Academy for the development.
“We didn’t do too good over the last two years, but you get lots of ice time, more than I’d get usually at home. I just love being on the ice every day and we were on the ice every day,” he said, adding it helped with his hockey development.
Karlson played this season with Carson Carels, who was drafted by Prince George in the first round of last year’s WHL draft. Carels was captain of the Pilot Mound squad and helped Karlson a lot this past season.
Karlson hopes to play next season for the U18 Parkland Rangers and is looking forward to playing in front of family and friends.
Now that he has achieve his goal of being drafted into the WHL, Karlson knows the hard work starts now.