By Jason La Rose via Hockey Canada

It’s a busy week for the Regina Pats with four Western Hockey League (WHL) games on the schedule, but there will be plenty of attention focused 4,000 kilometres to the east.

That’s because the team’s two top prospects, Maddox Schultz and Liam Pue, will be wearing the Maple Leaf with Canada White at the 2025 U17 World Challenge in Truro, Nova Scotia.

This year’s tournament puts the spotlight on some of the best 2009-born players from around the world, but that’s what makes Schultz and Pue special – both have 2010 birthdays, making them the only 15-year-olds among the 44 Canadians who made the trip to Truro.

(To put their age in context for the average Canadian hockey fan, Pue was born 12 days before Sidney Crosby scored the Golden Goal in Vancouver, while Schultz came along 15 days after the memorable marker.)

Since Canada went to a national under-17 team format in 2014, only five other underagers have cracked the rosters – Joe Veleno (2015), Matthew Savoie (2019), Shane Wright (2019), Michael Misa (2022) and Landon DuPont (2024). And only Savoie – like Schultz and Pue – was not granted exceptional status to play Major Junior hockey as a 15-year-old.

So the expectations are high, not that that’s anything new for the Pats’ dynamic duo.

“We’ve just got to put all that stuff aside, try not to worry about it too much,” Pue says. “And we’ve just got to play. Maddox has to play his game. I have to play my game. We just have to focus on the game, in the moment. Try not to worry too much about all the outside noise and just do our best.”

“There's going to be pressure all the time, right? The biggest thing is handling it,” Schultz adds. “I think I've been doing a really good job with that, just doing some different exercises mentally and always going back to what I'm capable of.”

Schultz has been showing what he is capable of for the last few seasons, and it’s exactly why he finds himself on the East Coast.

After racking up 63 goals and 134 points in just 27 games in U15 AA during the 2023-24 season, Schultz made the jump to the Saskatchewan Male U18 AAA Hockey League (SMU18AAAHL) last year as a 14-year-old with the Regina Pat Canadians.

All he did in the SMU18AAAHL was lead the league in scoring with 93 points (43-50—93) in 44 games and help the Pat Canadians claim league and regional titles before posting nine goals and 20 points in a seven-games-in-seven-days marathon at the TELUS Cup, scoring the overtime winner in the gold medal game to give Regina its record-tying fifth U18 Men’s National Club Championship.