James Patrick had coached defender Keaton Verhoeff for more than half a season when the Victoria Royals bench boss happened upon a picture that dropped his jaw as close to the floor as it could get.
“I was shocked,” Patrick says now, laughing. “I can still see that picture in my mind, and it’s such an amusing memory for me.”
The photo featured a AAA team based in Edmonton and a bunch of boys Patrick figured had to be 11 or 12, some smiling, others straight-faced. Verhoeff was unmistakable, “looking like a giant compared to these other kids,” Patrick says. His size came as no surprise since the kid was 6-foot-2 when he made his WHL debut with the Royals at the age of 15, when Verhoeff had size 13 feet and says, “I looked like a skier.”
The thing that floored both Patrick and his jaw in this particular team shot, though, was the sight of Verhoeff — now 6-foot-4, 215 pounds, 18 years old and the top-ranked defender available in the upcoming NHL draft — sitting right there in the middle of the front row, wearing goalie pads.
“I had no knowledge of this,” Patrick says. “No idea.”
This was the same kid who’d established himself as one of the Royals’ top four defenders when he made his junior debut as an under-ager, who played with poise beyond his years and was at times Victoria’s best player. But he’d done all that on the blueline, not between the pipes.
After Patrick saw the picture — in the family home of Royals forward Nolan Stewart, who’d played with Verhoeff growing up — he had questions for his rookie defender.
Chief among them: “When did you switch?”
“I think I was 12,” Verhoeff replied.
That meant that in just three seasons, the kid from Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., had gone from playing in goal to being one of the best defenders in the world in his age group.
These days, Verhoeff still encounters the odd person unfamiliar with his unique path “and their face kind of explodes when you tell them that I played goalie that long,” he says, with a laugh.
That face explosion happens because of how far he’s progressed in so little time. At just 16, Verhoeff posted the second-most goals scored by a WHL blueliner, he captained Canada at the 2026 U-18 world championship, and most recently, helped lead the University of North Dakota to the NCAA Frozen Four semifinal in his first college season.
“I’m a two-way defenceman, someone that can contribute on the offensive side, but takes a lot of pride in defending as well,” Verhoeff says, when asked to provide a scouting report. “I’m someone that the coach can trust and put out for important moments, to shut down or go out and try to help on the offensive side. That’s a big thing for me is being trusted by my coaches and teammates.”
Many Verhoeffs have worked to earn trust on the ice over the years. His dad, one of his grandpas and two of his uncles were all goalies, which explains why he became the fifth Verhoeff to play goal. “It was a bit in my blood,” says Verhoeff, who dreamt of suiting up between the pipes in the NHL like his idol, Carey Price, and also played baseball and lacrosse at a high level.
The summer he turned 12, Verhoeff was the last cut to participate in the Brick Hockey Invitational Tournament, a premiere event for Canada’s best young male players. That’s when he started to play defence in inline hockey and made the switch on the ice, too — also because he wanted to be more involved in the action. None of the other goalies in the family tried to persuade him to remain in the position, and one uncle even told him: “You aren’t weird enough to be a goalie.”
The transition wasn’t too tough given the hours he’d already spent over the winter playing out on his local outdoor rink in daily shinny games. “I’d be there at 3:45, right after school, and be there playing till 8:30 or 9 at night,” he says.
Once he committed to playing defence, Verhoeff threw himself into learning the skills required. “Being on the ice and being in the gym has never been a job for me, and never been something that pains me or makes me mad to go do,” he explains. “It’s something I love to do; to work on myself, to get better.”
He played on the RINK Hockey Academy U-15 prep team in Kelowna, B.C., where Verhoeff was not only coached by Jarome Iginla but also billeted with the Iginla family. “You can’t really learn from a better person,” Verhoeff says of the Calgary Flames legend. “He taught me how to control the game, how to play based off the time and the score, little things that you don’t learn from guys that haven’t played 1,500 games in the NHL, that aren’t Hall of Famers.”
Verhoeff was drafted fourth overall by the Royals in 2023, and made his debut that December. “He was not afraid to make a play, not afraid to play his game — it was really impressive for a 15-year-old,” Patrick says. “He handled the puck well. He skated well. Right off the bat, he liked to go. He was very confident offensively.”
That carried over into his first full junior season at 16, when Verhoeff had 45 points in 63 games and was key on the Royals’ power play and in big situations. “He needed to get better at the little things, stick-on-stick or boxing out, and those are things we worked on a lot throughout the year,” Patrick says, adding Verhoeff’s work ethic is “elite.”
This past season, Verhoeff chose the NCAA route after completing high school a year early. He’s coming off a freshman year with North Dakota that saw him put up 20 points in 36 games.
Fighting Hawks head coach Dane Jackson points to Verhoeff’s “incredible athleticism” among his blueliner’s top assets. “And he’s not just a stay-at-home, puck-mover D. He’s got a lot of offensive instincts,” Jackson says. “I think those two things, athleticism and his overall skill package, is pretty rare.”
Verhoeff was among the Fighting Hawks’ top-4 D as a freshman, he quarterbacked the power play and was among the team’s top players in ice time. “He produced quite a bit of offence as a young defenceman, which is not easy to do in our league,” Jackson says. “He’s got a really good shot. He can make high-level passes. I see him as a real strong two-way guy.”
“It was tough and it was fun,” Verhoeff says of the initial transition to the college game. “There’s some subtle differences. The biggest thing I noticed were guys’ sticks, guys breaking up passes and getting sticks on pucks. It took some time to adjust, but as the season goes on, I think you become a little more familiar and get more comfortable. That was the biggest thing for me was just focusing on getting better every game and taking a step each game.”
Verhoeff’s next step is being drafted to an NHL team, and he’ll find out which one on Friday. He’s revelling in the “once in a lifetime experience” he’s enjoyed in the leadup, including the Combine and watching Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final in Las Vegas, where he also appeared on Sportsnet’s broadcast for an interview between periods.
He’ll have 42 family members and friends at the draft. Verhoeff says his mom, Jennifer McEwen, has had the biggest influence on him, “in the characteristics that have built me and defined the way that I live every day,” pointing out she also shuttled him and his sister, Macy, to their many activities when they were kids. On the ice, he says his cousins, 25-year-old Kirby Dach, who plays centre for the Canadiens, and 23-year-old Colton Dach, a centre for Edmonton, have provided constant motivation, and he trains with them in the summers.
Jackson saw plenty of evidence of Verhoeff’s work ethic this past season. One moment stands out to the coach, though: After a bad loss, Jackson put the team through a tough practice that ended with a one-on-one drill in the centre circle, with a puck thrown in and two players going toe-to-toe. Verhoeff was one of the first to jump in to take on the team’s captain, 24-year-old Bennett Zmolek. “The way he bought into the drill, played it super hard, competed against some of our biggest and older players and really embraced it, for me, was really impressive for a young guy,” Jackson says. “It was how he handled an adverse situation and almost made it into a positive because of how hard he went and how genuinely he wanted to work at it, to get better.”
That’s no doubt how Verhoeff managed to thrive at a position he picked up at age 12. Jackson wasn’t aware of Verhoeff’s goaltending past until the Fighting Hawks coach sat down with his mom just prior to the season, and the coach couldn’t believe it. “I wouldn’t recommend that to many,” he says, with a laugh, of the late positional change. “But that just shows you what a great athlete he is.”
If you ask Jackson, whoever calls Verhoeff’s name is getting quite the person and player.
“I think he’s a winner,” the coach says. “He’s an accountable guy — he looks inward often to see how he can be better. As a person and as a teammate, he is outstanding. I think that’s where you always want to start when you’re trying to build a great team is with high-level individuals, and he’s definitely that.”