Kraken 2024 first-round draft choice Berkly Catton captained his Spokane Chiefs back to even in the Western Hockey League final via the best way he knew how. He scored Spokane’s first goal Sunday night and earned the primary assist on the last score of a four-goal, opening-period outburst that spanned just under five minutes. By first intermission, Spokane was up three goals on the way to a 6-2 win with Catton scoring his second of the night late in the third period to finish things off as each WHL conference champion has now won a game apiece in the best-of-seven series.
Then, Monday afternoon, Catton was named WHL Player of the Week for the fourth time this season, plus he was honored as the league’s Player of the Month in February. He has scored three goals in the first two games of the WHL title series. He was active in all zones Sunday, winning 12 of 22 faceoffs and firing six shots on goal. His first goal Sunday was highlight-reel material with a double-deke move on first a Medicine Hat defender and then goaltender and Tampa Bay Lightning prospect Harrison Meneghin. Catton’s goal tied the game and 1-1.
The first-period scoring spree is just what Catton, No. 8 overall pick last summer, and company needed after losing Game 1 in Medicine Hat (Catton scored the only Spokane goal in the Game 1 loss).
Catton leads all WHL skaters with 11 goals and 29 assists for 40 points in 17 postseason games. He’s six points away from tying Calgary Hitmen Pavel Brendl’s modern WHL record of 46 points in a single playoff run (1999). The 5-foot-10, 175-pound center has registered three or more points in eight of 14 playoff games and owns the longest active streak in the 2025 WHL Playoffs (14 games) as Medicine Hat star Gavin McKenna’s point-streak ended at 53 games with no scoresheet entries in Saturday’s Game 2.
“It’s a response we wanted,” said Spokane coach and former NHL forward Brad Lauer post-game Sunday. “Obviously, we didn’t want to give up that first goal that quick, but I thought our kids… it didn’t faze them. I thought we stuck with it and found a way.”
The two teams now face off for Games 3, 4 and 5 in eastern Washington starting Tuesday with Wednesday and Friday. If Games 6 and/or Game 7 are necessary they will be played in southeastern Alberta.
In the second period, 2025 NHL Draft-eligible Bryce Pickford scored his second goal of the series to cut the deficit in half with a long wrister that was dropped off by Nashville Predators and Tanner Molendyk on the powerplay.
It seemed that Florida Panthers prospect Hunter St. Martin got the Tigers within one for a speedy break in the final minute of the period as he wired a wrister high blocker side on Gordon Cowan, but further review found the puck rang off the iron and didn’t cross the goal line.
Spokane took the wind out of the Tigers’ sails in the back half of the final period as Martin chipped a puck past a Medicine Hat defender and teed up Mathis Preston for the young gun’s ninth goal of the playoffs.
“It speaks a lot about his character and his drive to be great,” Cristall, the WHL’s top-scoring player of the 21st century, said of Preston. “He’s super young, and he’s just unbelievable. Skates like the wind, can shoot it… For him to have that success out there, it speaks a lot about the work he’s put in in the summer and all the work that he’s done to get here.”
