Where Are They Now: Weatherby Hunts For Return to NHL With Predators
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – After a couple of seasons in professional hockey, Jasper Weatherby is now a Nashville Predator…and he’s on the hunt.
That hunt, specifically, is for a return to the National Hockey League after spending the 2022-23 season in the American Hockey League.
Weatherby is one of two players from the Wenatchee Wild to reach the NHL during its Junior A era from 2008 to this past season, first landing with the San Jose Sharks in 2021 before being traded to the Detroit Red Wings this past season and finishing up the year with the Red Wings’ AHL affiliate in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Born in Portland, Oregon, he fell in love with the sport through a childhood friend, growing up in Ashland in southern Oregon while playing the game in nearby Medford. Hockey was enjoying a period of growth in Medford just as he became more involved in the sport, but pursuing the sport more seriously would mean a few moves away from home for Weatherby. The first of those moves was to the Canadian International Hockey Academy in Rockland, Ontario at the age of 14.
“Around sixth or seventh grade, I realized I had something here. I could play at a higher level than what was being offered, so let’s see if I could find some other opportunities outside of Ashland,” said Weatherby. “When I was eighth grade, I logged road trips up to Seattle and Vancouver in the spring and stuff, whenever I could get ice – when you’re on the west coast, you have to fight for ice, and that gives you perspective for when you get to a hockey hotbed where there’s a lot of opportunity. It was a rare resource where I was from.”
Weatherby came into the CIH Academy in only its second season, and moved somewhat closer to home for his next two seasons, playing for the Omaha Lancers AAA program in Nebraska. He turned quite a few heads while on the Omaha roster, helping to lead the 16U program to a North American Prospects Hockey League Dixon Cup title and a bronze medal in the 2015 USA Hockey national tournament, while helping the program’s 18U team win a Midwest regional championship the following year.
He signed a tender with the New Jersey Titans for the 2016-17 season, but it was Wenatchee that brought him on board for two seasons, just as the program was about to reach new heights. After opening its run in the British Columbia Hockey League in 2015, the Wild raced through their competition in 2016-17, winning the league’s Ron Boileau Memorial Trophy as its regular-season champion. He would post 32 points in his first season of junior competition, setting the stage for the year to come.
“I knew after high school that I needed to play junior hockey, and I’d been cut from multiple junior teams,” said Weatherby. “I showed up to Wenatchee with just an opportunity, nothing guaranteed, and I didn’t know I was going to their main camp until a week before. I went there, gave it my all, and was lucky enough to make the team that first year. I always tell people that it’s the best-run junior program in the country – it’s first-class everything. A lot of that has to do with the ownership, the management, the coaches that they bring in, the fans are second-to-none – I was blessed to be around a lot of good people.”
The second season was one for the ages in Wenatchee – the Wild would cap their 10th anniversary season with a BCHL Fred Page Cup title, their first playoff championship in team history. After that, the Alberta Junior Hockey League’s Spruce Grove Saints fell by the wayside in five games. When all was said and done, Wenatchee was one of the last four teams standing in Canadian Junior A hockey, and Weatherby wrapped up with a hardware haul that included the league’s Brett Hull Trophy as its top scorer and a Vern Dye Memorial Trophy as its most valuable player. With 49 points, he led the team in postseason scoring – after the team’s move to the Western Hockey League this summer and the separation of the team’s record books, that mark will go down as a permanent part of the team’s history and a record that will never again be challenged.
Add that to his selection by the San Jose Sharks in the National Hockey League draft just weeks later, and his departure to the University of North Dakota at year’s end, and it’s quite a season to speak about.
“It was pretty awesome, just to be around the guys for that long,” said Weatherby. “I think people outside the sport might not realize this, but a lot of times when the season ends, with the relationships you’ve built, that’s the last time that team is ever together. That was the hardest thing – regardless of how it ended, it’s always hard to say goodbye to your teammates. I remember Bliss (Littler) saying, ‘The longer you guys go, the better opportunities (there will be) for everyone – whatever your hockey aspirations are, the longer you play, the better that opportunity is.’ We took it upon ourselves to work as hard as we could – very few teams get the opportunity to play in that tournament.”
Weatherby landed on a North Dakota roster looking to make its own climb back to the top after finishing third in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference’s Frozen Faceoff tournament the previous year – he scored five points as a freshman, and helped UND to an 18-win season in 2018-19. The next year, his production rose to 18 points, and the production of his team rose as well – with 26 victories in hand, North Dakota was the nation’s top-ranked team, and the outright NCHC regular-season champion.
Then, the sport shut down and everything changed.
“It feels like 20 years ago, honestly, but you remember that day specifically,” said Weatherby. “You’re in this gray zone of ‘what’s going on,’ and they bring you in and tell you the season’s canceled with the belief that you’re going to go home, and in two weeks you’re going to come back and start training again. As we all know, it wasn’t ‘go back in two weeks,’ it was ‘go back in three or four months.’ We wanted the opportunity that year.”
The following season, Weatherby’s junior season, started and ended unlike any other. The season began on December 2, with NCHC teams playing in a pod at Nebraska-Omaha’s empty Baxter Arena, with 10 games over an 18-day span and players taking classes online while living in a hotel. North Dakota would win the NCHC tournament and reach the second round of the NCAA tournament before falling out of the tourney against Minnesota-Duluth…in five overtimes.
“It’s one of those things where you watch those games on TV as a kid, whether it’s the NHL or college, and it seems like those players are warriors, and you start putting yourself in their shoes,” said Weatherby. “It was crazy – I’d never drank a Coca-Cola in between periods before, but they were running out of food and bringing in whatever calories they could get into us.”
With expectations of coming back to Grand Forks for one final season, Weatherby performed well at the Sharks’ delayed NHL Development Camp, and learned that the Sharks’ front office wanted to get him on the ice in the NHL right away. He signed his entry-level contract with the Sharks in late August, turning a fourth-round selection in the NHL Draft three years before into a spot on the team’s opening-night roster against the Winnipeg Jets.
He also earned a spot on the team’s power play unit, and didn’t wait long to barge onto the score sheet, scoring his first goal on his first shot, a game-tying snap from the left-wing faceoff circle in the second period of a 4-3 win over the Jets. For Weatherby, whose stepfather had Sharks season tickets and drove six hours to San Jose with him in tow, the impact of scoring that first goal in front of his family was unforgettable.
“It was one of those moments where you zone out a bit, but you try to stay present,” said Weatherby. “They put me in a good opportunity to score. It was amazing, it was nice, but the most important thing was, we got the win.”
Weatherby split his first season in pro hockey between the Sharks, where he notched 11 points in 50 games, and the AHL’s San Jose Barracuda, where he tallied 15 points in 25 games. He would spend the entirety of the 2022-23 campaign in the AHL, tallying six points in 39 games with the Barracuda before being moved to the Grand Rapids Griffins on January 18. He added 11 more points in 31 games in a Grand Rapids uniform before the season came to an end. Weatherby became an unrestricted free agent on July 1, and quickly landed a one-year deal with the Predators. He looks at the move as a fresh start under new Nashville general manager Barry Trotz, who was the team’s head coach for its first 16 seasons.
“Nashville’s going through a bit of a change, and they’re looking for renewal on some of [their] culture,” said Weatherby. “I just thought it was a good opportunity to keep on improving and showing the organization what I can do. I think a new change of place is going to be good.”
