Chase Harrington Got the C, Lit the Lamp, Helped His Buds and Dropped the Gloves

On Friday morning the Calgary Flames sent Chase Harrington back to junior. On Saturday night in Spokane he took off the sweater he’d worn in warm-ups, pulled on one with a “C” on the chest, and went out and had the kind of night that gets a hockey saying named after it.

The Spokane Chiefs named the 18-year-old left winger the 39th captain in franchise history before their home opener against the Tri-City Americans. Then he scored a goal, set up two more, including the winner, and fought. A goal, an assist and a fight in the same game is a Gordie Howe hat trick. By our count it’s the first one of his WHL career, in 224 games.

“It’s been crazy,” he told the crowd on the ice afterward. “There’s no place I’d rather be. I love it here.”

A day and a half

The Flames’ Friday trim took camp down to 27 players. The announcement, posted at 11:15 a.m. Mountain time, assigned Harrington to Spokane. The Chiefs had their own release up about an hour later, saying he was expected to be available for the home opener the next night.

Calgary’s second-round pick had spent the week before in the Flames’ veteran group, and on Thursday night in Seattle he played 11 minutes of his first NHL preseason game (here’s the notebook on that week). Thirty-some hours after his assignment, he was standing on the ice at Numerica Veterans Arena for the pregame ceremony.

The Chiefs announced their whole leadership group there. Harrington’s alternates are forwards Gavin Burcar and Owen Martin and defencemen Rhett Sather and Marek Howell. He takes over from Will McIsaac, who wore it for the second half of last season after Berkly Catton, the 37th captain, stayed up with the Seattle Kraken.

There was a Calgary voice in the room, too. FlamesNation’s Mike Gould reported that the commemorative video announcing Harrington featured Kevin Sawyer, the Flames’ television colour analyst and a former Chiefs captain himself.

In Spokane he’s Harry. “Well deserved Harry,” the Chiefs wrote under the video of the moment, and the WHL’s own account went bigger with the news the next day: “HARRY’S HOUSE!”

Spokane Chiefs: Putting the C in Chase Harrington (video, Sept. 26, 2026)

The sheet

He didn’t make anybody wait. At 3:42 of the first period a loose puck at centre ice sent him in alone on Tri-City goalie Xavier Wendt. It was his first shot of the season, and it went in. “Just had some speed, beat a guy, saw five-hole was open, put it in,” is how he described it on the ice after the game.

Spokane Chiefs: Harrington's breakaway goal, 3:42 of the first period (video, Sept. 26, 2026)

Tri-City tied it in the first. At 7:50 of the second Harrington set up Tyus Sparks for a 2-1 lead. The Americans tied it again, shorthanded. With 1:18 left in the second he made the second assist on Nathan Mayes’ goal, and that one held up as the winner in a 3-2 game.

Then came the third leg. Fifty-one seconds into the third period, behind the Tri-City net, Harrington and Americans defenceman Dylan LeBret dropped the gloves. The Spokesman-Review described it as coming out of “an innocent-looking stop in play,” and noted that LeBret is a Spokane native himself. Nobody who covered the game reported who started it, so we won’t guess. Harrington’s own explanation to the paper was short: “Just wanted to get the crowd going.”

The crowd was 9,057. His line on the official sheet: one goal, two assists, five penalty minutes, six shots, plus-3, and first star.

The Gordie Howe hat trick, finally

The Gordie Howe hat trick is hockey’s most backhanded honour. It isn’t an official statistic, so you have to add it up yourself, and the man it’s named for is credited with only two of them in a career that ran across five decades. Howe was the complete player of his era, as happy to hurt you as to beat you, and the name is a salute to that. The count is beside the point.

Harrington has been flirting with one for years. We went through every WHL regular-season and playoff game on his record, 224 of them from 2022-23 to Saturday, and opened the game sheet for every night he took five or more penalty minutes. Saturday’s fight was the eighth fighting major of his WHL career. Four of the other seven came within one piece of the set: three times he scored and fought but didn’t get an assist (at Prince George, Red Deer and Kelowna), and once, against Tri-City in February 2025, he had two assists and a fight but no goal.

Tri-City keeps turning up. Half of his eight fights have come against the Americans, and so has the one night it all lined up.

Spokane Chiefs: Hear from the Chiefs' new captain Chase Harrington after winning the home opener (video, Sept. 27, 2026)

Why him

Asked what kind of leader he wants to be, Harrington didn’t reach for anything grander than the game he already plays. “If I play my game, I know I’m a leader,” he said on the ice. “Scoring goals for our team, scrapping for the boys.” He was quick to share it, too: “We’ve got 25 leaders in the room, anyone could have gotten an A.”

Head coach Brad Lauer’s case was about the years he’s put in. “He’s been here the last couple years,” Lauer told the Spokesman-Review. “He understands the game and understands the standard that we have, and he’s one of those guys that gets it.”

It helped that he never really left. “I know all these guys, like pretty much all of them,” Harrington told the paper. “And if I don’t know ‘em, I’ve been talking to them on Snapchat. So, it feels like I’ve been here the whole time.”

What’s next

It’s his fourth season in a Spokane sweater, and the Chiefs go on the road right away: Portland on Oct. 2 and 3, then Everett on Oct. 4. They’re back home to Lethbridge on Oct. 9.

Calgary sent him down with a push. “I would be hopeful that he’ll be part of the national team (for the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship), as well,” Ryan Huska told Postmedia’s Daniel Austin the day Harrington was assigned. “If you’re looking up a picture of a hockey player in the dictionary, you’d probably see his face.” The 2027 world juniors are in Alberta. The Flames will be watching the sheet. So will we.

We’re following Chase Harrington through his season in Spokane. Every piece in the series is collected here.