Former Chicago Blackhawks head coach Jeremy Colliton is going back to junior hockey, and he is taking four jobs at once. The Western Hockey League has awarded its 24th franchise to Chilliwack, British Columbia, with Colliton as owner, governor, general manager and head coach.
The new club starts play in the 2027-28 season, the league said in its announcement. It will skate out of the 5,000-seat Chilliwack Coliseum and line up in the B.C. Division of the Western Conference. Its name and logo have not been revealed yet; the league says they will be unveiled at a local launch event, with details to come in the coming weeks.
A coach who has done it all, now buying in
Colliton grew up on a farm near Blackie, Alberta, southeast of Calgary. The Prince Albert Raiders took him eighth overall in the 2000 WHL Draft, and he went on to captain them, scoring 193 points in 252 games. He won gold with Canada at the 2005 World Junior Championship.
After six seasons in the New York Islanders organization, he moved into coaching. He was the youngest head coach in the NHL when Chicago hired him, and led the Blackhawks from 2018-19 to 2021-22. He then coached the AHL’s Abbotsford Canucks, just down the highway from Chilliwack, before two seasons as an assistant with the New Jersey Devils.
“I’m honoured to be back in the Western Hockey League, which played such an important role in my development as a player and person,” Colliton said. “Our family is thrilled to be returning to the Fraser Valley.”
He is not alone. The ownership group also includes former Vancouver Canucks forward Mason Raymond, an Olympic bronze medalist in 2018; former pro defenseman Brett Motherwell; Calgary marketing executive Mario Amantea, who will run business operations; and Calgary-raised commodities trader Patrick Lathrop.
Chilliwack has been here before
This is a second chance for the city. The Chilliwack Coliseum, opened in 2004 and known until 2019 as Prospera Centre, was home to the WHL’s Chilliwack Bruins from 2006 until 2011, when the franchise moved to Victoria and became the Victoria Royals.
Count the gap: the Bruins’ last season was 2010-11 and the new team’s first is 2027-28, so Chilliwack will have gone 16 full WHL seasons without a team. The building has stayed busy in the meantime as home of the Junior A Chilliwack Chiefs.
Here is the expansion club’s path to opening night:
- November 4, 2026: franchise approved
- Coming weeks: name and brand revealed at a launch event in Chilliwack
- Spring 2027: WHL Expansion Draft and WHL Prospects Draft, with rules still to be set
- 2027-28: first season in the B.C. Division
“This is an opportunity to write a new chapter in Chilliwack’s hockey history,” WHL Commissioner Dan Near said. Mayor Jason Lum urged residents to “pack the Coliseum on game days.”
For more on the game’s next generation, read about Macklin Celebrini closing in on 200 NHL points as San Jose’s 20-year-old captain, or how Harold Ballard put blue names on blue Maple Leafs jerseys in 1977.
The league currently has 23 clubs, 17 in Western Canada and six in the US Pacific Northwest. Chilliwack makes it 24 when the puck drops in fall 2027.
Further reading
Image: Grandmaster c (original uploader, English Wikipedia), Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
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