The W-H-L dedicated Thursday’s Bantam Draft to the memory of the victims of the Humboldt Broncos’ bus crash.

       Scott Thomas, father of deceased Broncos’ forward Evan Thomas, announced the draft’s first overall selection by the Edmonton Oil Kings.

There were a few surprises that deviated from the independent player rankings in the first round, but no trades. The closest there was to that was a slight delay by the Saskatoon Blades before using the sixth overall selection on centre Colton Dach…the younger brother of Bridge City Bunch star centre Kirby Dach.

“We had an offer to swap down a few spots,” said Blades’ general manager Colin Priestner when explaining the hesitation. “(We) ultimately decided we wanted Colton and we didn’t want to risk (trading down, only to have another team draft Dach).”

The Blue and Gold grabbed defencemen with their next three picks…Marek Schneider from Prince Albert in the second round, Charlie Wright of Olds, Alberta and Garin Scherr of Unity in the fourth. In the fifth round, the Blades grabbed forward Alex Bernauer from the Saskatoon Maniacs. In all, Saskatoon made 11 selections…five forwards, four defencemen and two goaltenders. Five prospects are from Saskatchewan, three from Alberta and three more from B.C.

The P-A Raiders took the first Saskatchewan-born player with the third overall choice in Nolan Allan. He’s a defenceman from Davidson who played Bantam hockey in Humboldt. He is the nephew of former Blades’ defenceman and captain Chad Allan. The first Saskatoon player selected was defenceman Karter Prosofsky in the second round by Kootenay.