Chase Harrington has fought eight times in the WHL, and last Saturday was the first time a fight came with a goal and an assist on the same night. The first Overtime below is all eight, from the league's own game sheets, plus the ninth fight a fight site gives him that never happened. Then Brennan Othmann on the parents who flew in for an opener he didn't play, the two student journalists who got our questions into a hallway at North Dakota, and the frames from Scotsman's Hill that didn't fit. Four Overtimes this week, none of them on the site.

This week

Scotia Place Turned the Corner. From Scotsman's Hill, It Finally Looks Different. (Rinkside Dispatch, Taylor Brooks) In August the side of Scotia Place that Calgary watches from was a green box. Five weeks later it's white panel and gold, shot from the same spot on the hill.

Chase Harrington Got the C, Lit the Lamp, Helped His Buds and Dropped the Gloves (Scout's Notebook, Taylor Brooks) A day after the Flames sent him back to Spokane, the Chiefs made him their 39th captain. Then he had the first Gordie Howe hat trick of his WHL career.

North Dakota Talks Today. Four Flames First-Rounders Meet in Texas on Halloween. (Rinkside Dispatch, Taylor Brooks) The short version of the UND season: Reschny, Carels, and a date in Texas against Michigan State with four Calgary first-round picks on the ice.

The Lawn Chairs: Carson Carels and Cole Reschny at UND Media Day (Rinkside Dispatch, Taylor Brooks) Carels on draft night at the family farm, Reschny on wearing the C at 19, and coach Dane Jackson on both, from Anthony Dillett's interviews for us at the Ralph.

Alberta's Rat Control Zone Remains Undefeated on Opening Night (Rinkside Dispatch, Taylor Brooks) The Flames brought a "rat" into the province on purpose, then scratched him for the Saddledome's last opener, a 6-1 loss to Seattle.

Overtime: Chase Harrington

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The ledger

The piece above says Saturday was his first Gordie Howe hat trick in 224 WHL games. Here's the work: every fight of his WHL career, from the league's own game sheets.

The near misses. Four times he was one piece short. He scored and fought in Prince George as a 16-year-old, in Red Deer (that fight is logged at 20:00 of the third, the final second of the game), and in Kelowna last March. None of those nights had an assist. The closest came against Tri-City in February 2025: two assists and a fight with Jake Gudelj, and no goal.

The Tri-City file. Half of his eight fights have come against the Americans. Two were with the same man, Grady Martin, eight weeks apart: first on New Year's Eve in Tri-City's building, then again in Spokane at the end of February. Saturday's opponent, LeBret, is a Spokane native. So the set finally came together against the team he's fought the most.

The fight that wasn't. If you look him up on hockeyfights.com, you'll find a ninth fight: Prince George's Corbin Vaughan, Apr. 2, 2026, in the first round of the playoffs. That was Game 5, the night Harrington tied it with 56 seconds left and won it 12:39 into overtime. The official sheet doesn't have him fighting anybody. It has two goals, no penalty minutes, and Vaughan fighting another Chief, Logan Wormald, at 1:26 of the third. If Harrington had fought that night, it would only have been one more near miss. He had no assists.

How we counted. We pulled his game-by-game log for every WHL regular season and playoff since 2022-23, 224 games, and opened the sheet for every game where he took five penalty minutes or more. Thirteen games qualified. Eight had a fighting major for him; the other five didn't. In each of the eight, exactly one opposing player took a fighting major at the same second, which is how the table pairs them. Exhibition and prospect games aren't in the count.

Overtime: Opening night

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Ten days and two parents

On Tuesday, the day after the roster came out, Brennan Othmann talked for four minutes on the Flames' own camera. The piece used one line of it. This is the rest.

He has played NHL games before, for two teams. Opening night was something else. "First time for me," he said, "so it's a cool moment for my family and I."

His parents flew in for camp and stayed through the opener. "I've never had them come to a training camp or an opening day or anything like that." They came to the preseason games too, including the one in which he lasted 53 seconds. His own count was 50: "I felt bad, I came to the first preseason game, I only played 50 seconds."

The credit, when he got around to handing it out, went to his mother first. "My mom was pretty pumped, so she's been through a lot. She was the one taking me to the rinks, taking me to early morning skates. My dad was a hockey coach, so he was coaching older guys at the time, but they were there the whole way with support."

The summer was work. He trained at Gary Roberts' camp in Toronto, and on the ice with Ryan Gardner, whom he has known for a few years and who he says is a friend of his uncle and his father. "He pushed me on the ice as much as I can be pushed," Othmann said, "and he said to me, you've just got to go in there and be confident."

Three pro seasons in, he described the job as plainly as anyone has. "You're trying to take a job. You're trying to play your way into the lineup, and you just got to continue to do that each day."

On Thursday he did not get the chance. His parents fly home Friday.

Overtime: UND media day

Anthony Dillett interviews Carson Carels, Sept. 30. Photo: James Chapman

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How we got the room

We were not at North Dakota's media day. Anthony Dillett of the Dakota Student took our questions in, and Jamie Chapman photographed it. This is the day from their side, and the answer from Carson Carels that the Q&A didn't have room for.

Anthony wrote this for you:

"The excitement had been building for a few weeks. We knew hockey was close on the horizon, but it wouldn't be real until we got back to work. On Wednesday, Sept. 30, we punched in. Walking into the Ralph Engelstad Arena is always a special experience, but our job on Wednesday took us down to ice level, the players' domain."

The Dakota Student's spot was just outside the press room. It was not much of a room: a stretch of hallway, two folding chairs and a block wall, with people coming and going. That is why every photo Jamie sent has two people in it and nobody else.

"I spoke to Carson first. He was a great conversation, humble and confident. The crowning elements of his outfit were his custom belt and draft night belt buckle, which he received to commemorate the 2026 draft."

Ice Time College Hockey West got a closer look at the buckle the same day, and reported that Carels grew up on a farm three hours from Grand Forks.

"Cole came to me about half an hour later. He carried himself with a similar poise to last season and was very gracious in answering my questions. Dane spoke to me immediately after, emphasizing the importance of remaining focused on creating a strong day-to-day for his team, not focusing on the postseason just yet."

Why college at 18. Anthony asked Carels what has changed to send more players to college hockey. The NCAA voted in November 2024 to let major junior players keep their college eligibility, starting Aug. 1, 2025. Carels, who played in the WHL for Prince George, said the rule mattered less to him than it did to older players:

"I think the age is kind of a huge thing for the top younger guys. If you want to be with the older guys and kind of make another jump to getting to where your final goal is, and that's obviously the NHL. ... I think when that rule kind of changed, it was more for the older guys as well, that they had more opportunity to play hockey for longer. ... I was one of those guys that was younger and kind of wanted more of a challenge as well."

He spent the summer at home rather than in Grand Forks, and said that helped: "Just where I was skating and who I was skating with kind of helped me with being on the ice and kind of setting the pace."

Anthony's own piece on Reschny runs in the Dakota Student on Oct. 13. We'll link it.

Overtime: Scotia Place

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What else the camera caught

The piece above used five of Saturday's frames. These are the ones that didn't fit, plus two from earlier visits and a night we were already up there for hockey.

Where we stand. If you want to shoot the same view yourself, it's the lookout on Scotsman's Hill beside the teepee sculpture, pointed at the towers. The camera is a Canon EOS M6 with its everyday 15-45mm lens. The comparison frames are all at 41 to 45mm, the long end of that lens, so nothing here is a telephoto trick. What you see from the lookout is what we got.

The other corner. The glass went in on the plaza side. On the opposite corner, the open structural bay we photographed in August is still open, five weeks later. It's the clearest sign on the whole block that this building isn't done.

The open bay, five weeks apart. Photos: Mark Johnson / Flames Scout Wire

The cranes, up close. Zoomed in from the hill, the lettering is readable. The white lattice-boom crane says MYSHAK on the boom. The orange telescopic crane carries XCaliber's X on its boom and its jib.

The Myshak crane, Saturday. Photo: Mark Johnson / Flames Scout Wire

The XCaliber crane, Saturday. Photo: Mark Johnson / Flames Scout Wire

In July the crane we caught at street level was a different animal: a red Mammoet telescopic crane working beside the steel, back when the building was mostly frame.

July 26. Photo: Mark Johnson / Flames Scout Wire

Journey night. This is the lot at 6:36 p.m. on Saturday, from farther along the hill, about an hour before the show. The coach buses lined up at the building are the tell that it wasn't hockey.

Saturday, 6:36 p.m. Photo: Mark Johnson / Flames Scout Wire

Game night. And the one we held back from the cover: the same hill six nights earlier, about three minutes after the cover frame, tighter on the building, with the roofline lit red against the last of the light.

Sunday, September 20. Photo: Mark Johnson / Flames Scout Wire

What we cut, and why

How small Carson Carels' hometown is. One outlet that talked to him at media day reported he grew up in a community of 50. A Flames prospect list published Friday put Cypress River at 175. Neither says where its number comes from, and they're more than three times apart. So the Overtime says what both agree on, a farm three hours from Grand Forks, and leaves the number out until we can source it.

How the cover got made

The film strip is drawn: we had an image model render an empty strip over an ember field, then muted the embers and cropped it so the two frames fill the cover. Jamie Chapman's photos sit in those frames exactly as he shot them, because we don't alter news photos, and the plate is now a template we can reuse for any two players.

Coming up

We're in the building tonight. The Wranglers play Abbotsford at the Saddledome at 5 p.m., and for the first time Flames Scout Wire has a media credential. Friday's opener was a 4-2 win. Jonathan Castagna, the forward we filed with the ten who "filled out the sheet" two weeks ago, scored his first pro goal and added an empty-netter. He told FlamesNation he went looking for the hat trick a little too hard: "I'm sure you can ask the guy I hit in the side of the face... emotions got the best of me and I went for it." Nothing was called. It's the same two teams again tonight.

The Flames play in Vancouver tonight and in Seattle on Sunday, the next chance at the Othmann and Ottavainen rematch. North Dakota plays its exhibitions this weekend and opens the season at Bemidji State on Friday, Oct. 9, and at home the next night. Anthony Dillett's piece on Cole Reschny as captain runs Tuesday, Oct. 13.

From the archive

Carson Carels: 9 Things You Need to Know: if the lawn chairs were your introduction to him, start here.