Chase Harrington: 9 Things You Need to Know

Chase Harrington spent the first week of Calgary Flames training camp in a dressing room full of NHL players, which is not where second-round picks usually spend September. He’s an 18-year-old left winger from Prince George, B.C., the 36th pick in June’s draft, and the Spokane Chiefs have him on their roster for a fourth WHL season. Here’s the notebook. Every item below has been checked against the record.

1. He opened camp in the NHL group, and found out from the team app. The Flames’ camp roster, posted Sept. 16, put Harrington in Team Red with Backlund, Frost, Coronato and most of the NHL roster. He was the only unsigned junior in the group. “I just saw it on the team app that I was early in the morning and my buddies in the other group are later, so I just kind of put two and two together,” he told Flames TV on Sept. 19. On the first day, the lines Pat Steinberg of QR Calgary reported had him rotating with Sam Honzek on Mikael Backlund’s left wing, with Joel Farabee on the right.

   Ryan Huska was plain about why he was there. “Zero expectations on him. I will say that,” the head coach said after that first practice. “We want to see him come here and learn how some of our older guys handle themselves on a daily basis.” By Saturday’s session Harrington was listed as an extra, and he didn’t dress for either home preseason game. He got his first one Thursday in Seattle.

   Calgary Flames: "Pretty surreal." Chase Harrington on his first NHL training camp (video, Sept. 19, 2026)

2. Two goalies went to their coach about his shot. Huska told the story the same day. Asked how his youngest camper had handled his first pro camp, he said both goalies had gone to goaltending coach Jason LaBarbera, separately, with the same message. “Barbs told me afterwards that both goalies were like, this guy can really shoot a puck,” Huska said. “So they both came to Barbs and said the same thing.” FlamesNation identified the pair as Dustin Wolf and Devin Cooley, Team Red’s two goalies. The Flames’ own preview had the scene from that first day: in a one-on-one drill he stripped an older opponent, then, “to raucous cheers from the Calgary vets,” walked in alone on Wolf and scored.

   His junior coach, Brad Lauer, has been making the same point for a year, calling it “an exceptional shot” and adding that “he needs to shoot more for us.” Harrington put 164 shots on goal last season.

3. The Chiefs say he tied for the team lead in goals. He led it. Spokane’s own season-end copy has Harrington tied with Tyus Sparks at 28. That’s the combined table: Sparks scored 16 of his 28 with the Vancouver Giants. Counting only games in a Chiefs sweater, Harrington led Spokane outright in goals (28) and points (57), and Sparks had 12 goals in 29 games. Both numbers are true. Only one of them describes Spokane’s season.

4. 105 penalty minutes, eighth in the WHL, and nobody above him came close to his scoring. Harrington led the Chiefs in penalty minutes by 31 over the next man. The seven players ahead of him on the league list all finished with 35 points or fewer. He had 57. “I bring physicality. I can compete,” he said on draft night. “I also have a lot of skill, you know, I could put pucks into the net.”

5. Calgary’s management sold him with the corners. “Unbelievable competitor. And he puts up points,” general manager Craig Conroy said after the pick. “If you throw a puck into the corner, he’s coming out of it 90% of the time.” Director of amateur scouting Tod Button went further: “He’s a gritty, tenacious guy. He creates room for his linemates,” he said, before landing on the line that stuck. “He has a ‘B’ game, which is physicality, tenacity and jam.”

6. NHL Central Scouting had him 26th, the top U.S. Division player on its final list. He climbed from 32nd at the midterm to 26th among North American skaters on the April list, which measured him at just under six-foot-one and 194 pounds. No other skater from the WHL’s U.S. Division ranked higher.

7. He left his hometown at 12. Carson Carels moved in and played for it. Harrington grew up in Prince George, then left at 12 for Delta Hockey Academy in suburban Vancouver, nearly 800 km south. His dad took a construction job down there and moved with him, and the Chiefs drafted him out of Delta two years later. Carels, a farm kid from Cypress River, Manitoba, went the other way and spent two full seasons on Harrington’s hometown Cougars, where the rink still misses him.

   They’ve been teammates three times, all on prospect teams: Team CHL at the Saddledome last November, Team West at February’s WHL Prospects Game, and Canada at this summer’s showcase. “He’s definitely one of my buddies,” Harrington said on draft night. In the first round of the 2026 WHL playoffs they were opponents. Late in the first period of Game 4 the two went to the penalty box together, Carels for roughing and Harrington for unsportsmanlike conduct. The next night, facing elimination, Harrington tied Game 5 with 56 seconds left on a shot that ticked off Carels’ stick, then won it 12:39 into overtime. Prince George won the series in six. “His game kinda speaks for itself, he’s a playoff player,” Carels told the Flames in August. “As soon as he gets on that ice, he’s just an animal.”

8. His coach says he found his game after Christmas. “After Christmas, I really think he took off,” Lauer said in the WHL’s draft profile. “I really thought he did a really good job the second half of getting to the guts of the ice and scoring goals.” By the league’s count he had 26 points in the second half, a point a game, and three of his four game-winning goals came after the new year. He scored at that pace around a lower-body injury in late January that the WHL listed as week-to-week.

9. There’s no contract, and there isn’t supposed to be one yet. Harrington is unsigned, and Calgary holds his rights. He hasn’t committed to a college, either. Since August 2025, WHL players have been allowed to play NCAA Division I hockey as long as they’re paid nothing beyond expenses, so that door stays open until he signs with Calgary. An NHL contract closes it. Players drafted out of the CHL can’t play in the AHL until the season they turn 20. Starting this season there’s one exception, first-round picks, who can go at 19. Harrington went in the second round, and his 20th birthday is Oct. 30, 2027, so 2027-28 is the first year the Wranglers are an option. This season he’s Spokane’s returning goal leader. His next audition is for Canada: he played for Team Canada at the World Junior Summer Showcase in Windsor this summer, and the 2027 world juniors are in Alberta. “It’ll be electric in Edmonton,” he told the Flames, “so I hope I can make my way onto the roster.”

Second-round picks rarely spend September in the veterans’ group. In Seattle on Thursday, Harrington played 11 minutes, threw four hits and put Mackie Samoskevich on his backside during a Kraken power play. “He’s got an edge, he’s got some skill and he’s not intimidated by the moment,” assistant coach Dave Lowry said afterward.

Updated Friday afternoon: the Flames assigned Harrington to the Spokane Chiefs on Friday, in the cut that took camp down to 27.

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