How a whirlwind year prepared Fraser Minten for the world junior spotlight

Over the past four months, hockey’s taken 19-year-old Fraser Minten on a rollercoaster ride. First came training camp with the Toronto Maple Leafs, where Minten, showing up on Day 1 with little expected of him by the blue-and-white faithful, became the story of camp. Impressing the Leafs brass with his steady approach, the tryout culminated in a breakthrough, Minten earning a surprise spot on the opening-night roster, making his NHL debut.

Then came the understandable fall back to Earth, when the club sent him back to the junior ranks after four big-league appearances. He rejoined the Kamloops Blazers, played seven games — was named captain — and then was traded to the Saskatoon Blades in a five-piece WHL blockbuster.

Still, after just six games with his new club, he was on the move again — this time to Oakville, Ont., for Team Canada’s selection camp. Now, just two months removed from that brief big-league spell in blue and white, he’s in Sweden decked out in red, preparing to lead Canada into the 2024 World Junior Championship for what will be his first taste of international action.

For most teenagers, it might have been an overwhelming stretch, a collection of plot twists stitched together in such quick succession, it all could’ve gone off the rails. And yet, reflecting back on the chaos of his past few months, Minten appears relatively unfazed.

“Overall, it's been lots of fun,” he said calmly on a video call from Malmo this week. “I’ve obviously had a lot of different opportunities, which is good.”

Rewind back to his spin through the Toronto fishbowl in October and the steadfast positivity should be no surprise. Minten’s unflappable nature seems to be a fundamental reason he’s managed to make the progress, and find the success, he has this season.

"I don't really feel any pressure," he explained during Leafs camp, days away from cracking a big-league roster for the first time. "Like, it wasn't necessarily something I expected coming in, to be here at this stage and getting the opportunity I am. So, I don't feel like I can lose.”

Looking at how far Minten’s come since Toronto took a swing and tabbed him with the 38th overall pick in the second round of the 2022 NHL Draft, it’s hard to label him anything but a winner, the young centreman having molded himself into a respected, well-rounded leader for both club and country.

“It's been challenging at times,” Minten finally admitted this week. “But there are some new experiences in all these areas that are only helping me as a person and as a player. You know, to be exposed to so much at this age is an unreal opportunity. And it's been really good so far, I think, overall.”

Amid a season that’s seen no shortage of tests — or, as Minten sees them, opportunities to prove himself — the latest came during that camp in Oakville earlier this month. While much of the talk of Canada’s squad has focused on likely 2024 No. 1 pick Macklin Celebrini — and on the absence of eligible Canadian high-flyers like Connor Bedard and Adam Fantilli, who’ve graduated to NHL stardom already — Minten walked through the door on Day 1 with the same mindset he brought the last time he was in Ontario vying for a roster spot.

“I just wanted to show as much as I could,” he says. “I just wanted to make the team however, you know? Do whatever was required at camp to make the team.”

Little did he know, his spot was all but sealed before he even showed up. In the end, Team Canada brass held Minten out of the camp’s exhibition tilts, with no need to see any more of what he could do.

Minten was named captain of the team on Sunday.

“I’m really happy with the spot I was able to put myself in through the start of the season I had in Toronto, and then in junior,” he says, “to be in a position where the staff here was comfortable enough to give me that spot without having that extra look at the selection camp.”

Through the early days of actual training camp with Canada’s finalized squad in Malmo, Minten’s lined up on the left side of what might wind up being the roster’s most scrutinized trio, alongside Celebrini at centre and Columbus Blue Jackets prospect Jordan Dumais on the right side. Still, don’t be surprised if he moves around some, the Swiss-army-knife talent sure to be used as a solution to issues that emerge elsewhere in the lineup as the tournament wears on.

“Fraser is such an intellectual player. He’s cerebral,” Peter Anholt, the leader of Canada’s management team for the 2024 tournament, told Sportsnet’s Ryan Dixon last week. “He knows the game. He picks up things quickly. He brings us size, he brings a good shot, he can play different positions, and play up and down the lineup in different ways.”

“He just reads the game extremely well,” Maple Leafs captain John Tavares — who took Minten under his wing during the teenager’s time in Toronto — said last week. “Always just seems to be in the right spot and makes the right play. It’s not super flashy, but it’s just really good hockey sense — he just makes really good plays all over the ice that compound, and lead to momentum and scoring opportunities.”

A two-time world junior gold medallist himself, and MVP of the ’09 tournament, Tavares knows what it means for the 19-year-old to have earned a chance to wear his country’s colours on the world stage.

“I remember going through the process and it’s such an exciting experience, a tremendous honour,” Tavares said. “Obviously, we know what the tournament means in Canada. Any kid growing up, once you get to junior hockey, to have that opportunity to play at the world juniors, representing Canada, is really, really special.”

For Minten, who’s set to take the ice at the tournament a decade-and-a-half after Tavares last did, the feeling is the same.

“It's huge. It's been a goal of mine for probably three, four years now,” Minten says of making the national team, earning the chance to play in the tournament. “At the start of my junior career in Kamloops, that was kind of the first time I started to realize, you know, I'm just as good as the other guys in my age group, if not better, and I think I can continue to improve and push and work my way into that national all-star, kind of, pool there. Obviously, I watch the games and the tournament every single year and it's some of the most fun, entertaining hockey.... I just think it's so special.

“When I heard that I made the team, it was just so many good emotions. Feelings of hard work paying off. You know, it's really rewarding to have a goal, that is very ambitious, come true.”

Thinking ahead to the first game of the true tournament schedule — a Boxing Day matchup with Finland — and what it will feels like to see that jersey with his name across the back and step onto the ice with the world watching, Minten’s demeanor shifts. A hint that his calm, collected approach is more fierce determination than innate go-with-the-flow.

“It's excitement, you know? That's where I want to be,” he says. “This training camp stuff's fun, it's good to be on the ice here with the team, but I want to get out there and compete.... I think I get the chance to be a pretty big part of the group here, will get lots of opportunity to play and help the team win. It means a lot to get that chance on such a big stage, and it's not something I'll take for granted. 

“I want to be in this position here. And I will do everything I can to be successful with it.”

Sure to help him when those high-stakes tests finally arrive is all he’s already walked through during this whirlwind season — chiefly, the experience in Toronto, which brought with it a crash course in dealing with the glare of the spotlight.

“I think you feel more comfortable as a result,” he says of how his time with the Leafs might help him in Sweden. “Like, when I first got to selection camp even, and there were cameras and reporters in the stands — for a lot of guys, they were like, 'Oh wow, that's pretty new.' You know, it's not always like that in the other NHL cities at camps. But obviously it didn't look like much compared to the amount of bodies that are always around with the Leafs there. So, having that experience of just feeling like you're the centre of attention at times there, and a big focus of the media and the city, it allows you to feel a bit more comfortable, I think, in a situation like this, where the spotlight's on you as well, the whole country’s watching.

“I think it's good to have some experience with it. You know, you develop some strategies to cope with all the noise, just from time mostly, experiencing it yourself, finding what works for you.”

As for how he plans to approach the on-ice aspect of the tournament, how he shifts his mindset to allow himself to thrive in an environment where every game, every play, matters — for Minten, little has to change.

“I don't think it shifts too much — just keep doing what I do,” he says. “You know, following my processes, doing the habit things that I do on a daily basis, preparing myself mentally, preparing physically. And then when competition comes, you go out and you play. And you live with the results at the end of the day, having peace of mind knowing that you did everything you could to prepare, and gave it everything you had out there.”

The goal, of course, is the same as it always is when Canada arrives at the World Junior Championship: arms raised, flags draped over jerseys, and a gold medal around his neck. From where he’s currently sitting, it’s a long way off. But having dreamt of that golden moment since his earliest days in the sport, Minten needs no time to think through what it would mean to reach that summit.

“It's the goal,” he says. “It's exactly where I want to be. It would mean a lot to myself. It would mean a lot to everybody else on the team. It would mean a lot to my family, all my friends, people that have seen me come up the ranks in the hockey world.

“And, I mean, I don't see why we can’t make it happen. Hopefully that's where we're at a couple weeks from now. I'm going to give everything I can to get that result.”