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Flames prospect Ethan Wyttenbach’s college opportunity came due to some unique circumstances
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Photo credit: Rob Rasmussen / Quinnipiac Athletics
Ryan Pike
Mar 26, 2026, 16:00 EDTUpdated: Mar 26, 2026, 00:34 EDT
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The Calgary Flames have amassed a lot of young talent through the National Hockey League’s entry draft in recent years. And all due respect to several incredibly talented youngsters in their system, but nobody has raised their stock as much, as quickly, in recent years as college prospect Ethan Wyttenbach.
A fifth-round selection by the Flames at the 2025 NHL Draft, selected 144th overall, Wyttenbach was a bit of a long-shot to be drafted: he was the 185th-ranked North American skater by the NHL’s Central Scouting Service. A skilled player with a history of putting up offence in prep and lower-level junior hockey, Wyttenbach had a small frame (5’10”, 180 pounds) and a somewhat small sample size of high-end hockey – just a single year with the United States Hockey League’s Sioux Falls Stampede.
But as the draft moved into the later rounds, where teams look to their scouting staffs for recommendations for calculated gambles to fill out their developmental pipeline, the Flames’ analytics group recommended that head scout Tod Button and general manager Craig Conroy call Wyttenbach’s name.
Nine months after that selection, the Flames’ gamble seems to have paid off.
Wyttenbach underwent knee surgery during the off-season to deal with a ligament injury, which was why he wasn’t an on-ice participant in July’s Flames development camp. But soon discussions occurred between the Flames and Wyttenbach regarding where he would play in 2025-26 to keep his development moving. Originally slated to head to Quinnipiac University as a 19-year-old freshman in 2026-27 after a gap year, an opportunity opened up for Wyttenbach to make the jump a year earlier than anticipated.
Here’s what Quinnipiac head coach Rand Pecknold told Bauer Hockey in a recent (excellent) video feature:
“Yeah, so honestly, what happened was he was supposed to go back and play in Sioux Falls for another year. And then what happened was Calgary takes him, and Calgary reached out to us and said, hey, we really think he’s ready for college, and we’d like him there with you now for a number of reasons. One, they were very complimentary. They love the way we develop players, you know, and they love our strength coach and how they felt like we would do a good job. And he was coming off an injury too. And we have a really good athletic trainer in Dan Smith, thought that’s the best place to rehab him. And we had been trying to get another kid, I won’t name who, and it just didn’t work out, an NHL first-round pick. And so I was like, okay, well, we have the money, the scholarship, to do it now, even though he’s a year out. Yeah, let’s do it.”
(We don’t want to speculate which NHL first-rounder Quinnipiac missed out on, but feel free to do so in the comments.)
Wyttenbach has taken to the NCAA like a fish to water. Yeah, his defensive game is still a work in progress, but he’s very quickly emerged as one of the most exciting players in college of any age. He leads the NCAA in points heading into the national championship tournament, with a five-point cushion over Michigan senior T.J. Hughes. He’s been one of the top players in his conference pretty much all season, and he was one of two ECAC players to be named a top 10 finalist for the Hobey Baker Award as college hockey’s top player. (The only player younger than Wyttenbach to be a finalist is Gavin McKenna, a front-runner to go first overall in the upcoming 2026 NHL Draft.)
Wyttenbach has been flat-out excellent as an 18-year-old freshman in the NCAA. It’s tough to be a productive 18-year-old in college hockey, let alone a great one, and Wyttenbach deserves a ton of credit for how he’s performed and grown. He’s gone from a promising late-round pick to perhaps one of the most exciting prospects in hockey.
And one fateful decision for him to go to college a year early played a big role in that breakout.
Quinnipiac opens their national tournament on Thursday when they face Providence. (You can stream the game at 3 p.m. MT on TSN+.)

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