Anthony Ganoung, a 17-year-old hockey goalie from Battle Ground, recently got a major callup for a weekend road trip in January with the Wenatchee Wild of the Western Hockey League (WHL).
Ganoung first got the news on New Years Day when Bliss Littler, Wenatchee Wild general manager, called him wondering if Ganoung would be available for a practice with the WHL squad. Ganoung has been with the Wenatchee Wild 18U squad this season as part of the Wenatchee Wild Hockey Academy.
“Originally, it was just for the practice, and then my mom brought up that they were playing three games that weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and that Saturday they were going to be down in Portland,” Ganoung said, adding that he brought up that scenario to Littler. “Around 4 p.m. on the 2nd, he called back and said, ‘Yep, I’m going to need you for the weekend.’”
Ganoung didn’t see any time on the ice, but he said the travel and experience of taking in the action from the bench made him feel very fortunate for the opportunity. He said that oftentimes the players in the other academy teams don’t cross paths much with the WHL players as schedules run differently or are taking part in online school versus in person classes.
“It was really nice to be able to be in the locker room and, you know, warmups and everything and be on the ice, and of course being on the bench was a blast,” he said. “Typically, when you’re on the bench in youth hockey and stuff, you have your helmet on and everything, but when you’re on the bench for the Western Hockey League, even more like the pro stuff, it’s pretty lenient. You get a baseball cap, you know, team hat, you get to relax there. It was pretty fun to just kind of be in a relaxed state, no helmet. You kind of just get to sit there and look pretty and have fun and enjoy the game.”
Ganoung was with the WHL squad for an intense three-day road trip from Vancouver, B.C., to Portland and then to the Tri-Cities. He added that the weekend trip was a huge realization for him. They loaded up the bus in Wenatchee and were on their way to Vancouver, B.C., at 11 a.m. Then, when that game was over, they were immediately on the bus to head straight to Portland and arrived at 4 a.m., he recalled.
After his weekend with the WHL squad, rejoining the 18U team, they secured the Pacific Northwest Amateur Hockey Association state title with a 2-1 shootout win over the Seattle Kraken 18U team on Saturday, Feb. 1, and punched their ticket to the Pacific District Championships at the end of the month in Anaheim, California.
Ganoung, being from Battle Ground, grew up playing for the Vancouver Rangers program out of the Mountain View Ice Arena until he was 12 or 13 years old. After playing for a weekend-style program in Wenatchee, Ganoung played for the Notre Dame Argos U18 squad in Wilcox, Saskatchewan. After a year in Saskatchewan, he joined the Wenatchee Wild 16U team for the 2023-24 season.
Ganoung said he believes his love of hockey was spawned by his mother being a San Jose Sharks fan.
“And so our house has always kind of been watching hockey on TV,” he said. “So maybe that’s where it started was just watching it on TV and then I was just like, ‘I want to play hockey.’ And then my parents found the Vancouver Rangers Association, and then at the young age of probably 8 or 9, we’re driving up to Vancouver at 5 or 6 in the morning to do a little scrimmage.”
