They were both first-round picks this past summer, and both are considered key to the future core of the Calgary Flames.
This weekend, however, Cole Reschny and Cullen Potter will be foes.
Reschny and his North Dakota Fighting Hawks teammates will host Potter and the Arizona State Sun Devils for a two-game set Friday and Saturday.
“Obviously, when he got drafted not long after me that night, it was pretty exciting to have him coming along with me,” Reschny said of Potter. “Hopefully, one day, we are wearing the Flames jersey together. But I guess this weekend, we’ll battle it out.
“He’s obviously a really good player. He has a lot of skill. So he’s going to be one guy that we watch out for.”
Which means Flames fans will probably be able to watch these pivot prospects go head-to-head on the same shifts.
The Fighting Hawks will control the matchups on home ice, and Reschny is a guy they already trust with some of the toughest assignments.
“I’m guessing that Cole will be out there a bunch against Cullen,” said Flames director of player development Ray Edwards. “It’ll be fun if that happens. I would love to see that.”
Someday, you’ll likely see them together on a power-play unit.
Both left-shot centres, the hope is they’ll thrive in a friendly competition for the better perch on the depth chart in Calgary.
Reschny, who was selected at No. 18 overall, is considered the more well-rounded of the two, although Potter’s blazing speed is very intriguing. The 32nd pick, he might be the fastest skater in the 2025 NHL Draft class.
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As Reschny prepares for his first NCAA showdown against his future pal, he has some momentum on his side. The 18-year-old from Macklin, Sask., just popped for five points — a goal and four assists — to lead the Fighting Hawks to a pair of victories over the Omaha Mavericks. He was saluted as the National Collegiate Hockey Conference’s forward of the week.
“I think that was kind of a ticking time bomb for me,” Reschny told Postmedia. “I was kind of waiting for that weekend, and it did feel nice.
“I’d been getting a few unlucky bounces, and it was frustrating at times. But I was just trying to stick to my game and play the right way and trust that I’m going to earn those bounces and that it’s going to go my way eventually.”
Thanks to his offensive outburst against Omaha, Reschny is suddenly averaging a point per game as a college freshman. There are only 13 other NCAA newbies who can make that claim, and that’s with a lot of high-profile arrivals from the CHL.
Even with eight assists and 10 points so far, Reschny’s most impressive stat is his success rate at the faceoff dot. He’s swiped 59.6 percent of his draws.
“He is as smart a player as I’ve known and got to know over the last 10 or 11 years,” Edwards said of Reschny, the leading scorer last season for the WHL’s Victoria Royals. “Every weekend, he seems to learn and adjust more. For example, against Omaha, I know there were some offensive numbers and that is great, but what I really liked about him was how direct he was. It felt to me, watching both those games, that he was like, ‘OK, this is a little different level now, so I have to raise my game and raise my intensity and raise my competitiveness,’ and I thought he did that. So really good to see.”
Calgary Flames prospect Cullen Potter, right, a sophomore with the Arizona State Sun Devils, checks Gavin McKenna of the Penn State Nittany Lions.
On paper, Potter’s current numbers leave a little to be desired.
Already a sophomore because he enrolled early, the 18-year-old has scored just once and collected six points in 10 outings this fall, although Edwards stressed that this Minnesota-raised speed demon deserves plenty of credit for spurring the Sun Devils to a dramatic comeback this past weekend against the Colorado College Tigers.
“There’s different expectations and different pressures when you’re drafted in the first round, and I think they both want to do well by the Flames,” Edwards said. “But you just try to get them both to relax a little bit and play their game and rely on the things they can control.
“I watched Cullen the other day, when they came back in that game. He didn’t get a point on any of those three goals, but he was a big part of all three. If you go back and watch the film, he was the one that entered the puck on the one power-play goal. On the second one, he was the one that kept the puck in off of a lost faceoff. And on the six-on-five, he won the battle on the faceoff. The puck comes over to the wall and if he doesn’t win that battle and box out the D and get the puck to the point, they don’t possess the puck. So he doesn’t get a point for any of the three of those, but those are all really important plays.
“I know people look at points and put a lot of emphasis on that, but if you look deeper into the game, you see he had a big impact there,” Edwards concluded. “I’m not worried about Cullen producing.”
If Potter doesn’t produce this weekend at North Dakota, it could be spun as a positive for the Flames.
Because it likely means that Reschny shut him down.
For a couple of days, these first-rounders will put their budding friendship aside.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Reschny said. “It’s going to be a good matchup. They have a good team. We have a good team. So I think it will be a good battle.”