Blackhawks draft pick West also star high school quarterback

LOS ANGELES -- Mason West has role models for his journey toward making the NHL with the Chicago Blackhawks, who selected him in the first round (No. 29) of the 2025 Upper Deck NHL Draft on Friday. New York Islanders captain Anders Lee and Buffalo Sabres forward Tage Thompson have navigated parts of the journey West hopes to make.

Lee has reached out to help the 17-year-old forward, while Thompson has been more of a guide from afar.

West is a two-sport star, playing football and hockey for Edina High School in Minnesota.

Amazingly, Lee played those two sports for the same school almost two decades ago, becoming a local legend. Like West, he was an elite quarterback and recruited to play each sport in college.

Lee was selected by the Islanders in the sixth round (No. 152) of the 2009 NHL Draft after some scouts were unsure if he’d opt to pursue a career in football.

The current toast of Edina athletics, West went much higher, in part because he declared last month he would play hockey exclusively after trying to win a state championship in football as a senior this fall.

He will join Fargo of the United States Hockey League after football season and then join Michigan State University to play college hockey.

The actions -- and unexpected words -- of Lee put West on that path.

Earlier this season, Lee texted West out of the blue to offer support. To this day, West says he doesn’t know who facilitated the life-altering connection.

“He's a really great guy,” West said. “It was nice to get advice from someone who kind of went through it.

“Obviously, you can talk to your parents, you can talk to people from community, but it's kind of hard to find a guy that kind of went through the same thing. So, it's super cool to talk to him and meet him and kind of learned about his process and then kind of have him guide me through a little bit to my process.”

Lee, a forward who has played the past 13 seasons for New York and has been captain since the start of 2018-19, told West to follow his heart. Lee was recruited to play college football for schools such as Northern Illinois University but opted to play hockey at Notre Dame for three seasons (2010-13) before turning pro.

“You’ve got to love what you end up doing, whether that's four years in college and then some,” Lee said earlier this year. “I think it's tough when you love both sports."

West is good at football; at 6-foot-6, 218 pounds, he can see over the line of scrimmage and is durable enough to survive the pounding of the position he plays.

Last season, he completed 178 of 244 passes for 2,592 yards, with 37 touchdowns and four interceptions. He finished with a 139.9 passer rating and received recruiting interest from Marshall University, Kent State University, Miami (Ohio) University and South Dakota State University.

West believes he can be great at hockey.

In three seasons of high school hockey, he has 114 points (51 goals, 63 assists) in 91 games. Two seasons ago, he had 38 points (15 goals, 23 assists) in 30 games and won a state championship.

He believes his athletic skill set translates best to the ice instead of the gridiron.

That’s where Thompson enters the conversation.

He has yet to speak to the Sabres star, but West studies the game of the power forward regularly.

Like West, Thompson is 6-foot-6.

Thompson played college hockey for two seasons at the University of Connecticut (2015-17), during which time he was selected by the St. Louis Blues in the first round (No. 26) of the 2016 NHL Draft.

He then struggled to find his game early in his pro career and has talked about how he needed to let his brain catch up to what his growing body could do.

Thompson scored 18 goals in his first 100 NHL games. But the 27-year-old has 158 goals in his past four seasons, figuring out the mechanics of his shot.

West knows that transition awaits him. He says he doesn’t believe he is done growing and said he has added almost an inch to his frame since last football season. He plans to put on another 10 pounds before arriving in Fargo in December.

“It's hard to find a player like me, I guess, because I a think I'm a unique player,” West said. “I think I want to be like Tage Thompson, but I also want to be my own player and be unique in that way and try to do things that a lot of tall players can't.”

The Blackhawks believe that will be the case, trading with the Carolina Hurricanes to get into the first round for a third time and get a player who was ranked No. 27 on the final list of North American skaters released by NHL Central Scouting.

“It’s just the tools -- the raw tools are just something you don’t see that often,” Chicago general manager Kyle Davidson said. “He’s probably available at that point because he’s behind the curve. He’s not quite dedicated himself 100 percent to hockey, but at that size, that athleticism, that skating ability, that talent, the sky’s the limit.

“I’m swinging for the fences and figured, why not? Let’s go for a big one here, and so that’s kind of what I did.”