To understand why the 1994 WHL Bantam Draft was the best for the Warriors, one has to look at the years preceding it to fully understand the scope of how good it was.

Back in the early days of the Bantam draft, teams just exchanged a few names once a year and then went on their merry way for the rest of the off-season. The inaugural 1990 draft saw the Moose Jaw Warriors pick sixth overall and select Lethbridge forward Marcus Larocque. History doesn’t record what his numbers were in any other leagues –they even spelled his name wrong at the draft – but he never played in the WHL.

Others from that first round ended up being star WHL players, like Brandon’s Bobby Brown (88 points in his final WHL season), Prince Albert’s Shayne Toporowski (82 points in 1993-94 with the Raiders), and Spokane’s Bryan McCabe, a two-time world junior star who ended up with a long NHL career after going to the Memorial Cup with Brandon.

This was the Warriors’ inauspicious entry into the world of the bantam draft.

The Warriors’ second pick fared much better in the WHL, as goaltender Jody Lehman from North Battleford, and Lehman played three and a half years with Moose Jaw and most of his final WHL season with Brandon.

While a few teams didn’t even draft in the second round that year, things got a little bit more involved in 1991.

The Warriors drafted sixth overall and got Curtis Brown from Senlac, Saskatchewan. Ryan Smyth from Banff, who might have had the best hands in front of the net as anyone in his era in the WHL, was picked in the second round. The Warriors selected one more player in the fourth round before calling it a day.

In 1992, Brandon picked thrice in the first seven picks – imagine that happening today – while the Warriors picked Justin Fleming tenth. Defenceman Kevin McKay was a second round pick and the Warriors didn’t pick again until forward Mike Broda in the fourth round and goaltender Tyler Love in the fifth.

Again, most teams didn’t see the value in picking much beyond the fourth round as things wound down after the 73rd overall pick.

With the fourth overall pick in 1993, the Warriors chose Travis Tipler, a forward who had 20 goals in 121 WHL games over three seasons. Other players like Scott Spiller, Warriors and Legends Hall of Famer Chris Twerdun and Jeff Milleker were also chosen in the first few rounds and finally the bantam draft is starting to take the shape of what it looks like today. Still, it only lasted 85 picks and most teams were off to the golf course after the fifth round.

Finally, in 1994 draft day got a bit longer. It was that day that the Warriors’ and most of the rest of the WHL took a more studious approach to player selection, after seeing the success Brandon was having each year.

With the third overall pick, the Warriors took Chad Hinz. Hinz is the second leading scorer in Warriors history. In terms of sheer points, he’s the best Warrior ever selected in a bantam draft format.

Dustin Paul was chosen in the fourth round, and he would go on to three 30-goal seasons in the WHL, two of which with Moose Jaw and the last with Red Deer.

Teams were starting to walk away from drafting further players, but with their eighth round pick, the Warriors chose defenceman Scott Schoneck from Abbey, Saskatchewan.

Schoneck is one of a handful of five-year Warriors, and is the franchise’s all-time leading scorer among defencemen. He had a stellar 76 point season at 19 (20 goals, 56 assists). He played five seasons with the University of Saskatchewan before a couple of years in Las Vegas in the ECHL.  

In the second round, they picked Jordon Flodell, who played in 152 games for the Warriors as part of five seasons in the WHL. Jason McLean was a goaltender picked by the Warriors in the second, and  played a few seasons in the WHL before one year with the University of Regina Cougars.

Nathan Read was taken in the third round, and he scored 17 goals in two seasons with the Warriors. Defenceman Chris Sotiropoulos was chosen in the fourth a few picks after Paul, as was Jeff Zorn in the fifth round. Sotiropoulos played three years in the WHL  while Zorn finished his WHL career with the Saskatoon Blades, scoring 56 points in his final season before going to the University of Alberta for five seasons.

Chad Kletzel was chosen in the sixth round and he played three full years in the WHL before finishing his junior A career winning the Centennial Cup with the Fort McMurray Oil Barons.

In terms of volume of quality players, both in Moose Jaw and throughout junior hockey, the 1994 draft was the best in franchise history from between 1994 and the present day drafts that we can legitimately analyze.

The best so far, at least

Seventh best: 2001

Sixth best: 2015

Fifth best: 2011

Fourth best: 1997

Third best: 1996

Second best: 2011

Best: 1994