Late-Bloomer Khaira Exceled in BCHL at BetLM

Late-Bloomer Khaira Exceled in BCHL

Prince George, B.C. (NHL/Kimelman) — Jujhar Khaira is proof that not all hockey play­ers blos­som at the same time.

Play­ing minor-midget hockey, the Cloverdale, B.C., native went undrafted by the West­ern Hockey League. How­ever, a scout from the Prince George Spruce Kings of the British Colum­bia Hockey League saw some­thing in him, and over the last two sea­sons, the rela­tion­ship has been ben­e­fi­cial to both sides.

In his sec­ond sea­son with Prince George, Khaira — a left wing who now mea­sures in at 6-foot-2 and 182 pounds — fin­ished 10th in the BCHL with 79 points in 54 games. He also had 29 goals, includ­ing a team-best 10 on the power play.

That pro­duc­tion helped him earn the No. 74 spot in NHL Cen­tral Scouting’s final rank­ing of North Amer­i­can skaters for the 2012 NHL Draft.

“He was a big part of the suc­cess this year for his team,” Cen­tral Scouting’s B.J. Mac­Don­ald told NHL.com. “He logged tons of min­utes and played on all spe­cial teams. An under­rated play­maker. He han­dles and dis­trib­utes the puck very well, [and] he’s respon­si­ble at both ends of the rink. Good size and used it effec­tively in pro­tect­ing puck and in the corners.”

Prince George GM Mike Hawes told NHL.com that Khaira’s style of play reminded him of another Vancouver-area player — Boston’s Milan Lucic.

“Jujhar is the guy that always leads on the forecheck,” Hawes said. “He has the abil­ity to knock defense­men off the puck and cre­ate scor­ing chances. Once he gets the puck, he’s able to con­trol it and fend guys off with his strength and power and get the puck to the net for opportunities.”

An oppor­tu­nity is what Khaira was look­ing for after going uns­e­lected in the 2010 WHL draft. While dis­ap­point­ing, he said it wasn’t unex­pected. How­ever, that slight wasn’t going to push him out of the game he loves.

“There’s never been an option of quit­ting hockey,” he told NHL.com. “I’ve always loved the game, always loved to play.”

That meant being a bit cre­ative, and when an offer from Prince George came up, he jumped at the chance.

“It was the [BCHL] that gave me my first oppor­tu­nity,” Khaira said. “I wasn’t signed with any junior B teams. No WHL teams came ask­ing me to sign. I went to a BC junior camp for Prince George and they signed me out of there. It was my first option and it worked out really well.”

Hawes cred­ited one of the club’s Vancouver-area scouts for dis­cov­er­ing Khaira and con­vinc­ing the team to offer the young­ster a camp invitation.

“Our scouts in the Van­cou­ver area had iden­ti­fied Jujhar as a guy who had slipped through the cracks,” Hawes said. “He saw a late-bloomer with his minor hockey. He really didn’t come into his own until the year before we brought him up. The scout in the area wanted to bring him to our camp as a 16-year old because he thought he could crack our ros­ter as a 16-year-old. We brought him to camp and had a look at him. Within the first day of camp, we knew we had some­thing spe­cial, that we couldn’t let him go, so we got him all signed onto our ros­ter. He had a ter­rific year as a 16-year-old and an even bet­ter year last year.

“To be hon­est, it kind of clicked for him the few months prior to him com­ing to camp with us. I think at the tail end of his first year of midget hockey in Sur­rey, he kind of came into his own the last cou­ple months and that’s what drew our scout’s atten­tion. For that rea­son he wanted to bring him to camp. Over that sum­mer he put on a lot of strength, and for that rea­son was able to come into camp and really knock our socks off. We didn’t antic­i­pate see­ing what we saw in him.”

Khaira was excited to find a team that wanted him, even if that team was a 10-hour drive north.

“After I signed, my mom and dad were hes­i­tant of tak­ing me up there,” Khaira said. “I was just happy to be [signed]. I don’t think I slept for a week that week. After that, see­ing how excited I was, they felt more con­fi­dent with me up there.”

After the draft, Khaira is com­mit­ted to play next sea­son at Michi­gan Tech. The Everett Sil­ver­tips own his WHL rights, but Khaira said right now his first choice is to go the NCAA route.

Our [for­mer] coach [Ed Dempsey], he’s an alum and had a lot of great things to say,” Khaira said. “Just talk­ing to the coach­ing staff there, they said I’d be a main build­ing block for the pro­gram. They were offer­ing a lot of play­ing time in key sit­u­a­tions. That was the main thing that sold me.”

Wher­ever Khaira ends up, he’ll likely be the only player of Pun­jabi decent on the team.

His par­ents immi­grated to Canada when each was young, but Khaira is a first-generation Cana­dian. And while his par­ents grew up enveloped in the Cana­dian hockey cul­ture, other fam­ily mem­bers aren’t as famil­iar with the game.

His father’s par­ents live in Canada now, but Khaira said their under­stand­ing of the game for a few years was lim­ited to cheer­ing for the same team their grand­son is play­ing for. Now, he said, they get the game a bit more.

“They under­stand,” he said. “There was a game where I got into a fight and my grandpa was there and he was try­ing to give me point­ers and stuff. That was funny.”

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