Hockey Foreseen
A Prospect Spotlight featuring Olivers Murnieks
(Photo courtesy of the Sioux City Musketeers)
There have been just twenty-two Latvian-born skaters who have suited up in the NHL, and sixteen-year-old center Olivers Murnieks is taking crucial early steps to perhaps one day add himself to that total. Murnieks began playing in the Latvian U17 junior league when he was just thirteen years old, leading his Baltu Vilki team in scoring en route to becoming the third all-time leading scorer as a 13-year-old skater in that league. The following season he was already playing in the Latvian second-tier men's league, and by 15 he was playing for HK Mogo in the top Latvian league (he scored 5 goals and 10 assists in 18 games played as the only U16 player in the league).
This year, the 6'1, 190-pound teenager has moved from his homeland to the United States to play for the USHL's Sioux City Musketeers. In his first 15 games, Sioux City's youngest player is co-leading the team in goals with eight and he has ten total points thus far.
Hockey Foreseen
A Prospect Spotlight featuring Lars Steiner
Lars Steiner, the sixteen-year-old right winger from Davos, Switzerland, has started off his initial season in North America with eleven points in his first three games for Rouyn-Noranda of the QMJHL. Playing well above his age group is nothing new for Steiner, who has throughout his young career played in leagues in which most of the players were two or three years older than him. At 12 he was playing U15 hockey, and at 14 he was playing U17 hockey. He played most of last season in Switzerland's U20 league at 16 years of age (he put up 22 points in 33 games as one of the youngest players in the league) and he was a leader on Switzerland's squad at the U18 Hlinka-Gretzky Cup last summer (he was tied for first in team scoring, albeit at just 2 points in four total games). Now, as a rookie for the Huskies, he is among the youngest players on the team.
Hockey Foreseen
A Prospect Spotlight featuring Beau Akey
Beau Akey is a 6’0, 170-pound defenseman playing his rookie season in the OHL for the Barrie Colts. The sixteen-year-old right-shooting blueliner brings an intriguing mixture of excellent skating and hockey sense that belongs more to a 19-year-old than a player just getting started in major junior hockey.
Akey’s skating ability stands out immediately as soon as he hits the ice. He is a tremendous skater, both in up-ice speed and four-way agility. He looks equally adept and comfortable skating forward and backward and transitions between the two with almost invisible fluidity. As such, he can control space and gaps quickly, stepping into open areas to reach loose pucks or shut down attack lanes with surprising speed. With the puck in his own zone, Akey shows great hockey iq and the capacity to slow the game, make the correct reads under pressure, and execute clever little plays to either break the pressure with his feet or move to puck accurately to a teammate.
Hockey Foreseen
A Prospect Spotlight featuring Mathieu Cataford
Mathieu Cataford enters his rookie season in the QMJHL with high expectations. Taken sixth overall by the Mooseheads in the 2021 QMJHL Entry Draft, the sixteen-year-old winger looks to bring the same kind of scoring power that he showed in AAA (he led his team in scoring for two seasons before last year’s pandemic cancelled year). The 5’11 (180cm), 183-pound (83-kg) winger hails from Saint-Constant, Quebec and is likely to become just the second NHL-drafted player from the small city on the southern bank of the St Lawrence--just across the river from Montreal—when he becomes eligible in 2023 (Michel Periard was drafted 188th overall by Ottawa in 1998).
Cataford plays with intensity at both ends of the ice, showing a high-level work rate on every shift and making the most of his ice time thus far in his rookie season for Halifax. Through his first six QMJHL games, he has two goals and two assists with nine shots on goal and is currently ninth in early-season rookie scoring.