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<\/p>\nMINNEAPOLIS \u2014 When Saskatoon Blades general manager Colin Priestner broke the news to Evan Gardner following a Nov. 30 game that he didn\u2019t get invited to Hockey Canada\u2019s selection camp for the 2025 World Junior team, he immediately broke down into tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat else can I do?\u201d Gardner asked.<\/p>\n
Nothing, Priestner told him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had the highest numbers of anyone, the most wins, and he did it last year too,\u201d Priestner said on a phone call back in December. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised if he\u2019s the starter or the backup next year, and you\u2019ve just got to dust yourself off and prove them wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eight months later, almost to the day, Gardner was standing inside Ridder Arena wearing Hockey Canada workout gear at the World Junior Summer Showcase, where he\u2019s vying to make the 2026 team in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was pretty heartbroken not to get an invite at Christmastime,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cLast summer, I didn\u2019t get an invite either, so I was really working towards that winter, and to hear that I didn\u2019t get it, it kind of tore me apart. So I really put in a ton of time into my craft and a ton of work with my goalie coach (Jeff Harvey) back in Saskatoon to hopefully get an invite here, and it panned out, so I\u2019m super pumped. This is something that\u2019s super special for me. It\u2019s something I\u2019ve been wanting to do for a long, long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s not the front-runner. Returnees Carter George and Jack Ivankovic both played well in Canada\u2019s disappointing quarterfinal exit in 2025 and were sent home early on Thursday to leave Gardner and Sharks first-round pick Joshua Ravensbergen to play Canada\u2019s final two games against Sweden and the USA.<\/p>\n
At the moment, he\u2019s vying to be the team\u2019s No. 3. But he\u2019s used to a little adversity.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the 19-year-old goaltender\u2019s first Hockey Canada experience. He never played for them at the U17 or U18 levels.<\/p>\n
He grew up in Fort St. John, British Columbia, a town of about 20,000 people, and they only had AA hockey at the time. He was always on the A team until he moved to Kelowna to enroll at RINK Hockey Academy.<\/p>\n
He was a third-round pick in the 2021 WHL bantam draft and is the first to say that if it weren\u2019t for the delayed COVID draft pushing it from the spring and into December, he would have been drafted much later. His play with the RINK Hockey Academy\u2019s U18 team in the fall that year earned him the third-round selection.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t make the Blades as a 16-year-old and was their backup to start his NHL Draft season the following year. When NHL Central Scouting released its players to watch list for the 2024 draft, he was given a \u201cW\u201d rating, which indicates a 6th\/7th round candidate. On their midterm list that year, he was their No. 16-ranked North American goalie.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also on the smaller side (Hockey Canada lists him at 6-foot and 175 pounds, and the WHL lists him at 6-foot-1 and 177 pounds).<\/p>\n
But he just kept playing well, and as the year went on, he took the net in Saskatoon from the veteran Austin Elliott (who backstopped the London Knights to an OHL title and Memorial Cup this spring after the Blades released him to hand the net to Gardner). By year\u2019s end, he\u2019d posted a .927 save percentage. Despite having played just 30 WHL games, NHL Central Scouting moved him up to No. 7 on their final list. He then posted a .910 save percentage in another 15 playoff games.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jackets selected him in the second round of the draft and made him the fourth goalie selected after Ilya Nabokov, Mikhail Yegorov and George, who was selected three spots in front of him. There were members of the Blue Jackets organization who liked him better than George, and it became an internal debate for them ahead of the draft.<\/p>\n
Gardner has felt the love from the Blue Jackets, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir goalie staff is unbelievable there, and they have so much faith in me,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ve treated me great, I\u2019ve learned a lot from them, and I can\u2019t wait for what the future holds.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a solid post-draft season as Saskatoon\u2019s starter, Gardner now has a .917 save percentage across 74 career WHL regular-season games and has already signed his entry-level contract with the Blue Jackets. In the spring, he made his AHL debut with the Cleveland Monsters and stopped 16 of 19 shots in a 3-0 loss.<\/p>\n
When he maps out his path, he stops himself to chuckle. The third-round selection in the WHL draft lit a fire under him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were, I believe, six goalies taken in front of me (in the WHL),\u201d he pointed out, remembering the number.<\/p>\n
Getting cut by the Blades at 16 grew that fire.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just hoping a team would take a flier on me. That\u2019s all I wanted, was just to show a team what I was capable of, and then I had a great second half and kind of took over in the playoffs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Once Gardner started getting starts early on in his draft year, Dan Da Silva, Saskatoon\u2019s head coach, said they could see the breakout second half coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were always quality starts and we had a really good team in front of him, but there came a point where we just felt that we were most comfortable with him back there as the last line of defence and for a 17-year-old goalie to give you that type of confidence in your chances to win a game, that speaks volumes to the work he had put in to get himself to that,\u201d Da Silva said on a phone call on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Gardner has done it while managing Type 1 diabetes.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is beloved by all of his teammates. He\u2019s a very popular guy in the room. He\u2019s a very happy-go-lucky guy. He\u2019s always got a smile on his face. He\u2019s easy to talk to,\u201d Da Silva said. \u201cHe obviously does a lot there with his diabetes situation and handles that extremely well, and mature beyond his years for someone having to deal with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was diagnosed eight years ago this summer, when he fell ill on a trip with his parents to Kelowna for a Blue Jays baseball camp and had to be hospitalized. His parents had noticed some symptoms crop up, including some weight loss. He still has to check his blood sugar levels during games, though he no longer has to take a finger-prick test to do so and instead uses Dexcom, a glucose monitoring system on his phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a few things that are connected to me. I have a pump,\u201d he said, lifting his right sleeve to reveal it on his shoulder. \u201cDuring intermissions, I\u2019m always checking it. Lots of snacks during the intermissions just to make sure I\u2019m not going low during the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also missed all of February last season with a lower-body injury.<\/p>\n
Hockey Canada \u2014 who were in touch with Harvey and Monsters goalie coach Brad Thiessen about Gardner through last season, even after they didn\u2019t invite him to selection camp \u2014 were impressed by how he managed the starter workload, how he played once he returned in March from his injury and how he played in his AHL debut.<\/p>\n
Harvey and Thiessen also raved about him to Dan De Palma, Team Canada\u2019s goalie coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvan\u2019s been playing good goal for a long time now, and I understand why he\u2019d be disappointed (last December) and rightly so, but he just kept playing good,\u201d De Palma said. \u201cEvan has earned it. He earned the right to be here, and arguably he could have been here before, but he\u2019s here now, which is great.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
De Palma describes Gardner as a very sound, technical, competitive goalie who doesn\u2019t make mistakes. In working with him this week, he has found him to be very coachable as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo he\u2019s got that talent, he\u2019s got that work ethic, and then he\u2019s able to continue to learn,\u201d De Palma said. \u201cReally polite, respectful, engaging. He\u2019s just a super young man, and I\u2019ve heard a lot about him from Jeff and Brad, and they couldn\u2019t speak highly enough about him, and I think he has even exceeded what I thought he would be.\u201d<\/p>\n
De Palma, who was a small goalie himself, doesn\u2019t see size in his evaluations either. (With Gardner, George and Ivankovic, three of Canada\u2019s goalies at the summer showcase were on the smaller side.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t look at height, I don\u2019t look at a whole lot of that in terms of anything. It\u2019s just \u2018who\u2019s going to stop the puck?\u2019 and obviously there\u2019s more to it than that and that\u2019s oversimplified, and for sure a guy that\u2019s taller has a little bit of an advantage, but at the end of the day if he\u2019s the best guy for the job to help us win a gold medal then that\u2019s all that we care about,\u201d De Palma said.<\/p>\n
In his debut in the Red-White game, Gardner stopped 14 of 17 shots in a 4-3 shootout loss, but two of the goals came on the power play, and the other was with the opposing net empty. He also stopped the first five shots he faced in the shootout, before finally giving up the winner in the sixth round in a bit of a duel with Ravensbergen.<\/p>\n
Da Silva has always been most impressed by Gardner\u2019s ability to read plays.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a very smart goaltender. He can read shooters really well, he can read how plays are developing and knows where everybody is on the ice and if there\u2019s guys backdoor or high slot. He\u2019s always got his head on a swivel, and he\u2019s always checking and scanning the ice,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s very sound positionally. He doesn\u2019t get out of position. You don\u2019t see him scrambling or sliding past his posts or getting out of position very much at all. He knows his crease very well, he knows his posts very well, and he just uses his size. He\u2019s very, very calm in there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gardner believes his skating is actually his No. 1 attribute.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m able to put myself in spots, my habits, and the little things you can pick up on if you really watch me that I believe help set me up for success down the road and ahead of what\u2019s happening (in) the play,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then when it comes down to it, I just find a way to stop pucks, which is what everyone wants, right? I compete on it, and I just find a way to stop pucks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, Priestner estimated Gardner alone was probably worth a third of the Blades\u2019 wins.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s just so consistent. He rarely has a bad game, and if he does, it\u2019s a one-off,\u201d Priestner said. \u201cHe\u2019s so projectable because he\u2019s so consistent. He doesn\u2019t have those games where he\u2019s not very good; he\u2019s just always really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
After one more year in the WHL with the Blades, they think he\u2019ll offer that for the Monsters and then the Blue Jackets someday, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re pretty biased, but he\u2019s a special goalie,\u201d Priestner said.<\/p>\n
(Photos courtesy of Steve Hiscock \/ WHL)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 When Saskatoon Blades general manager Colin Priestner broke the news to Evan Gardner following a Nov.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[392,385,99],"class_list":["post-50157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-columbus-blue-jackets","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}