A hockey prodigy from Channing is among the latest prospects picked in the WHL draft.
Wyatt Stinton was selected in the league's annual bantam player draft May 19, going 102nd overall in the fifth round of the draft to the Regina Pats. The draft is open to the best 14- and 15-year-old talents in western Canada and the United States.
Listed at 5-foot-8, 145 pounds, Stinton played this season with the Rink Hockey Academy U15 prep team in Winnipeg. In 30 games with the club, Stinton scored 23 goals and added 24 assists for 47 total points, finishing third in team scoring. It was Stinton's first full season of hockey outside northern Manitoba, having played for teams representing the north or Flin Flon Minor Hockey programs until this season.
Stinton suited up in the prestigious Brick Invitational Hockey Tournament in Edmonton back in 2017, leading Team Manitoba at the tournament with five goals and 11 points in six games. Before the second wave of COVID-19 stopped the 2020/21 season, Stinton played for the Norman Wolves U15 AAA team, leading the team in scoring with five goals and nine points in five games.
Stinton, the son of former Bomber Tyler Stinton, is the third local product to be picked in the WHL draft from the Flin Flon/Creighton/Denare Beach area in recent years. Justin Lies was selected by the Vancouver Giants with the 56th overall pick in the 2018 WHL draft, going in the third round, while elsewhere in the Lies family, Joey Lies was picked 133rd overall - in the seventh round - by the Swift Current Broncos in 2020.
Before Stinton and the Lees, the Flin Flon area had a dry spell of talent in the WHL draft - the last player before those three to be selected was Allan Meyer, who was drafted by the Red Deer Rebels in the eighth round back in 2007.
