2024 NHL Draft Player Profile: Terik Parascak, Prince George Cougars
June 17, 2024 - Western Hockey League (WHL)
Prince George Cougars News Release
To quote Prince George Cougars General Manager and Head Coach Mark Lamb, everybody has a different time.
For Terik Parascak, the time is now.
The quick-thinking Cougars winger is riding a meteoric rise in the WHL to the 2024 NHL Entry Draft, where he's ranked 15th among all North American skaters.
It's been a surreal experience for the player dubbed the 'super rookie'.
"I guess when you look at kind of where I came from at the start of the year, this was not really something I saw in the cards for my summer plans," Parascak told Cougars play-by-play broadcaster Cole Waldie. "I was just thinking of going down to Las Vegas and hoping to be a potential pick and have that opportunity. Wherever I go, it's going to be unbelievable, and that's when the work starts."
The 5-foot-11, 179-pound forward entered the season with something to prove after being sent back down to the CSSHL's Edge School the previous year.
"From the Bantam Draft and now the NHL draft, you can make a lot of mistakes rushing people and pushing them into ice time that they're not ready for," Lamb explained. "It doesn't mean they're bad players or anything like that. Everyone has a different timeline, and I think the NHL teams do that too. You need to get out on that ice. You need to go through different situations. You need to make some mistakes and play on the penalty kill and the power play and play and that last minute of the game. He probably wouldn't have got it if he stayed here the first year. We did that with Terik and it's the best thing that we've ever done.
I wouldn't be surprised if he goes in the first round."
Parascak barreled out of the gates in 2023-24 with three straight multi-point games, including a showstopping four-goal, two-assist performance against Victoria on September 29.
"(I) used that as the motivation for me to improve my game and made me understand what I needed to do to kind of get to the next level," Parascak explained. "I had to get a little bit bigger, stronger, work on my skating and just came into this year and got off to a good start. Having that hot start just gave me more confidence to keep going throughout the rest of the season. And obviously, it's a huge honor even just to be ranked, but that high? Yeah, it's a huge honour."
The Lethbridge, Alta. product wrapped up his season with 43 goals (including seven game-winners) and 62 assists for 105 points and a +49 rating in 68 games.
He led all CHL rookies in goals, assists, points and plus/minus, set a Prince George rookie scoring record and had more multi-point outings (29) than games where he was held off the scoreboard (15).
Parascak continued to make an impact in the postseason, putting up six goals and eight assists for 14 points until he was sidelined by injury in the Western Conference Championship, where the Cougars fell in a double-overtime heartbreaker to the Portland Winterhawks in Game 6.
"Experience is experience," Lamb added. "We get right to the Final Four and that was a heartbreaking loss. But until you're there, you really don't know. You have to feel it. You have to be there. As coaches, we can talk all we want about how hard it's going to be when you're there, but our team really knows how hard it is to get there and how hard it is to move on. I think that experience for Terry, even though he didn't play in the last few games, is big. He was always around in the dressing room, so he felt everything.
Parascak, who was recently named to the CHL's All-Rookie Team, also snagged an invite to the 2024 Kubota CHL/NHL Top Prospects game, the 2024 NHL Combine and was nominated for the WHL's Jim Piggott Memorial Trophy, which recognizes the league's Rookie of the Year.
Twenty-eight NHL clubs took the opportunity to meet with Parascak at the combine, and now, it's just a matter of waiting to see who will call his name on the weekend of June 28 in Las Vegas.
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