Blackhawks prospect Mason West plays hockey with quarterback’s perspective — because he is one

New Blackhawks prospect Mason West has a unique perspective on the ice. He sees hockey differently than most.

The same is true about his vision on the football field.

West’s dual-sport status as the star quarterback at Edina High School outside Minneapolis and now the No. 29 overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft has attracted a ton of attention. But what might be most fascinating is how the 6-6, 218-pound forward’s excellence at each sport affects how he plays the other.

Brett Skinner, coach and general manager of the USHL’s Fargo Force, saw that firsthand when West joined his team in March. The newcomer immediately showed that he deserved power-play time, and their strategy discussions were mind-stretching.

“He would talk about reads and checking down,” Skinner said. “I think about it like, ‘One, two, three, four,’ as I’m looking at my reads. But he’s doing that instantaneously.

“As a quarterback, you’ve got to read the blitz and move the ball quick — you’re not always sitting back in the pocket. So he could one-touch a puck . . . to relieve pressure and make plays to teammates to give them time and space. The way he would talk about it to me was the first time I had thought about it that way.”

Edina football coach Jason Potts also has had many conversations with West, who turns 18 in August, about the crossover influence.

“He describes that in hockey, when he’s passing, [everyone is] moving so fast that you have to lead them — it’s not like they’re stationary,” Potts said. “In football, when [receivers] run a slant or a dig [route], you have to lead them.

“I’ll ask him, ‘How did you [get] the timing so good in that window?’ And he’ll say, ‘It’s just like hockey.’ ”

Community inspiration

As a sophomore at Edina in 2023-24, West threw for 2,625 yards and 28 touchdowns with 11 interceptions, leading the Hornets’ football team to the state championship game — a narrow loss.

Then he switched gears and totaled 15 goals and 23 assists in 30 games for the hockey team, leading it to the state championship game — a narrow win.

As a junior this past school year, he added 2,592 yards and 37 touchdowns (with four interceptions) in football and 27 goals and 22 assists in hockey. His talent has changed the playbook — literally for Edina’s athletic department and figuratively for kids throughout the hockey-obsessed Minneapolis suburbs.

“We had a lot of players that focused on hockey and didn’t play football, and Mason has been impactful changing that narrative by . . . showing you can be really good at both,” Potts said. “He’s really sparked the interest in football in our community. Now we have several players playing hockey and football.”

West received three football scholarship offers from FBS schools — Marshall, Miami (Ohio) and Kent State — and has caught the eyes of many more. Potts said he has met with 26 Division I coaches, including those from Michigan and Minnesota in the Big Ten.

But NHL interest in West surged last winter, and scouts began nagging Skinner about bringing West into Fargo — which already held his USHL rights — after the high school hockey season ended. That prompted Skinner to go watch one of West’s Edina games in person.

“You see the size and athleticism and, from a scouting standpoint, you’re really drawn to that,” Skinner said. “When I saw him the next time, what stood out to me was his vision, his hockey sense and his ability to make players around him better. He rounded out his game.”

Road to the draft

West ended up playing in Fargo’s last 10 regular-season games, tallying nine points, the highest per-game rate on the team. He achieved that through sheer talent and work ethic, not through technical perfection, because he has a lot left to learn. Never has he had a hockey-specific skills coach, nor has he played in many elite tournaments. For an NHL prospect, he’s extremely raw.

That’s a type of player the Hawks have targeted often in recent drafts, believing their development resources and patience will allow these prospects to ultimately reach a high ceiling. Indeed, when West had access to even USHL-level resources and coaching in Fargo, his development accelerated.

“You don’t want to say, ‘I’m going to fix every-thing that every NHL guy wants me to do, right now,’ ” Skinner said. “It was a process, and he bought into that. I’m not exaggerating when I say it felt like he was picking up something new every day. He really took off with us.”

West noticed the difference in the difficulty level but handled it well, unsurprisingly. In his words, he does “a good job adapting to a lot of stuff.”

Until that point, he hadn’t decided which sport to pursue as a career, but the Fargo experience solidified hockey as his choice. He spurned his football offers and narrowed his hockey recruitment to two schools, Michigan State and Boston College, before eventually committing to the former for 2026-27.

That seems like a terrific choice, considering how swiftly Spartans coach Adam Nightingale has transformed Michigan State into an elite program and how much he helped future Hawks defenseman Artyom Levshunov the year before last. The Hawks recently hired Nightingale’s brother, Jared, as coach of the Rockford IceHogs.

On draft night, the Hawks obtained intel suggesting West wouldn’t make it out of the first round, with the Kings rumored to be planning to take him at No. 31. So they traded up for the Hurricanes’ No. 29 pick to nab him.

“I just really wanted to . . . take what I thought was a grand-slam hack,” Hawks general manager Kyle Davidson said. “I was swinging for the fences and figured, ‘Why not? Let’s go for a big one here.’ ”

Next steps

West, a self-described loyal guy, will play one more football season for Edina this fall. Training camp already has begun. Once the season ends in November, he’ll go directly to Fargo, missing only the beginning of the USHL season.

His football plans are unusual, but the Hawks insist they’re OK with it, downplaying injury concerns. It’s worth noting that West believes he’ll be able to do more hockey training than football training, even during football season, and he has Potts’ approval.

“As a quarterback, there’s a lot of throwing and mental aspects of practices, more than physical,” West said. “I leave the physical side to hockey. I try to work on both things, but I can definitely skate and throw in the same day.”

The Hawks believe they were only able to get West because of his ongoing participation in football, which worried every other NHL team. Hawks scouting director Mike Doneghey thought West would have been a top-20 pick otherwise.

So what happens if he throws for 4,000 yards and 60 touchdowns this fall and, say, Michigan extends a football offer? The Hawks pressed him about what he’d do in that scenario. He assured them he wouldn’t give the offer a moment’s thought.

“I don’t know if I’d really answer [the call],” West said. “My main goal is just to . . . try to win a state [football] championship, and then it’s all hockey from there.”