SAN JOSE — Brad Berry was fully expecting Jasper Weatherby to be back in Grand Forks by now, getting ready for his senior season with the North Dakota men’s hockey team. Weatherby was going to be the captain of the Fighting Hawks, who once again looked capable of challenging for a national championship.
All of that changed last month after the Sharks’ development camp. It was evident at that point to all involved that Weatherby, at 6-foot-4 and over 220 pounds, was ready to be a pro.
Weatherby soon signed a two-year entry-level contract. Now all that was left for him to do was let Berry know he wasn’t going to be back on campus.
“I wouldn’t say disappointed. I would say caught off guard would probably be a better term,” Berry said of Weatherby’s decision. “But here in North Dakota, that’s our job. We want players who aspire to play in the National Hockey League.”
It might happen soon for Weatherby.
Of all the Sharks prospects that took part in the just-completed rookie showcase in Scottsdale, Arizona, Weatherby, 23, has perhaps the best chance to crack the roster and play for the team he grew up cheering for on opening night Oct. 16 against the Winnipeg Jets.
Weatherby, Dylan Gambrell, Sasha Chmelevski, Lane Pederson, Joel Kellman, and Scott Reedy, and maybe one or two others, will all be in the mix to be the team’s fourth-line center at the start of the season. Weatherby, though, is the biggest player of the bunch, and also possesses good hands around the net and a keen ability in the faceoff dot.
“Opportunity comes at funny times,” Weatherby said of turning pro, “and sometimes when it knocks, the best thing to do is just go ahead and answer.”
Certainly, Weatherby has always believed in himself.
He was born in Portland, Oregon, and grew up in Ashland, where he fell in love with hockey and started to get serious about a future in the game. He was 13 when he enrolled in the Canadian International Hockey Academy just outside of Ottawa, Ontario – a huge step up in competition considering what he was used to in Oregon.
From there he moved to Valley, Nebraska where he played for the Omaha AAA Lancers. He graduated from Douglas County West High School in 2016 but was unable to either land a tryout or stick around long-term with several other junior teams.
In a last chance of sorts, Weatherby got invited to try out for Wenatchee of the British Columbia Hockey League. He not only made the team but by the time he left two years later, had been drafted by the Sharks in 2017 and led the BCHL in both regular season and playoff scoring in 2017-18.
Weatherby signed with North Dakota, where he played in 100 out of 101 games over three seasons, collecting 47 points. He ranks sixth all-time at UND with a .578 faceoff winning percentage.
“He grew up in Oregon, which wasn’t a hotbed of hockey as far as players coming out of there and moving up the ranks,” Berry said. “But he was a guy that had to prove himself all the time. He went from place to place and had to prove that he was a good hockey player.
“He went into Wenatchee to prove himself there and came into our team in a very hard and heavy league and he proved himself here. That’s what he does. He’s a motivated young man.”
A conscientious one, as well.
Weatherby and fellow UND player Jacob Bernard-Docker, an Ottawa Senators prospect, had both attended a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Grand Forks after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020.
In December of last year, Weatherby and Bernard-Docker took a knee during the national anthem before North Dakota’s season-opening game against Miami (OH) in Omaha – a demonstration that was believed to be the first of its kind in NCAA Division I men’s hockey.
Weatherby’s family has a history of standing up to racial injustices and inequities. Notably, his grandmother, Ann Macrory, was a 25-year-old civil rights activist when she participated in the Selma to Montgomery march. His grandfather, Ralph Temple, was one of the American Civil Liberties Union’s leading lawyers. He worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and acted on behalf of protesters and people of color during the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War.
“It’s super important to me,” Weatherby said of his activism. “Diversity runs in my bloodline and standing up for equality and people who maybe aren’t as fortunate as myself. It’s awesome coming to San Jose here. It’s a real melting pot of different ethnicities and different orientations.
“For me, it goes back generations, just to be able to carry that on. I’m lucky to have a platform here, as small as it might be around the hockey world.”
#NCHCHockey supports our student-athletes desire to express their individual beliefs and respects expressions that share in our values pic.twitter.com/zmOfZN7HoB
— The NCHC (@TheNCHC) December 3, 2020
Weatherby remembers coming to the Bay Area as a kid, either to participate in youth hockey tournaments in San Jose or to attend Sharks games. In 2016, a year before he was drafted by the Sharks, he came to watch a game in the team’s first appearance in the Stanley Cup Final.
Now he’s trying to make the Sharks roster.
“It’s surreal,” Weatherby said. “I always tell people I won a Silver Stick championship (at Sharks Ice in San Jose). So, trying to bring a little of that championship mentality to the big club. It’s a dream come true.”
To do that, Weatherby will have to play to his strengths: Win faceoffs and battles for pucks, be a strong two-way player, become a reliable penalty killer, and chip in with some offense.
“I hope he’s going to be a guy who’s going to be hard to play against,” Barracuda coach Roy Sommer said. “He’s a shooter. I watched him out here (during) captain’s practices and went, ‘Wow, who’s that?’ He looked good.
“I think he’ll push for a job if he plays the way I think he’s capable of playing.”
Not bad for a guy who was originally going to be attending class in Grand Forks right now.
“You have that goal and that’s what you’re looking for,” Weatherby said of making the Sharks out of training camp. “But at the same time, what’s best for me is going to be continuing to get better. So for myself, that’s my goal right now.
“I want to make the big club and if I end up making the big club. That’s great. I’ll continue to work hard, if I end up getting sent to the Barracuda, absolutely, I’ll keep working hard and try to make the most of it. Just excited and happy to be here.”
