On the first weekend of December 2024, Chase Reid was in Watertown, S.D., playing against the Shamrocks with his Bismarck Bobcats in the North American Hockey League.Reid, who would turn 17 later that month, registered three goals and five points in the two-game set that weekend. They would prove to be his last games for Bismarck.A few months prior, the Chesterfield, Mich., native had been scratched and then cut by his Tier I USHL Waterloo Black Hawks and had landed in the Tier II NAHL in North Dakota.At the time, nobody knew he would end up playing almost 30 minutes per game as a No. 1 defenseman on the OHL’s Soo Greyhounds. Nor that, less than 16 months later, he would be No. 2 on NHL Central Scouting’s rankings of North American skaters for the 2026 NHL Draft — the top-ranked defenseman on the list and behind only Gavin McKenna.Even those who’d worked with him or had believed in him along the way didn’t see that coming.Not Kyle Lawson, his minor hockey coach with Victory Honda for two seasons of U15 and U16 AAA.“I’m not going to bull— you, I think anyone that tells you that they saw it at that point would be lying to you,” Lawson said. “For me to sit here and tell you that I thought it would ever come to this? No, I can’t say that.”Not Greyhounds general manager Kyle Raftis, who drafted him in the seventh round of the 2023 OHL draft and brought him in that December when one of his right-shot defensemen, Andrew Gibson, left to play for Canada at the World Juniors.“It was kind of interesting just to watch the trajectory of him because I think a lot of people weren’t aware of the name,” Raftis said.Not even the staff at Michigan State, who committed him way back on Aug. 1, 2024. At that point, the Spartans’ coaching staff thought he’d be a first-round draft pick.But potentially the first defenseman taken? A top-five pick? Named the OHL’s Western Conference’s second-best skater in its 2025-26 coaches poll?No chance.“He was like the No. 4 on his NAHL team,” Spartans associate head coach Jared DeMichiel said. “It’s incredible.”Not even Reid believed this was coming.When he first arrived in the Soo, he didn’t expect to get minutes right away, figuring it would take time. Instead, in three games in five nights that first week, he played 19 minutes, 24 minutes and 19 minutes.Then he was off.In almost 100 combined OHL regular-season and playoff games since that first week as a Greyhound, he didn’t play under 20 minutes in a single game again. As a mid-year arrival in the OHL, and after registering 12 points in 18 NAHL games, he rattled off 40 points in 39 games as a rookie with the Greyhounds.Almost to the day after he made his OHL debut with the Greyhounds, he was invited to play for USA’s World Junior team in Minnesota in his draft year. By then, he’d registered another 34 points in 30 games. After a strong showing as the youngest skater on the American roster, his place as one of the draft’s top prospects was cemented.He hasn’t looked back.Chase Reid joined the OHL’s Soo Greyhounds in December 2024. (Jenn Pierce / CHL)Power skating coach Mindi Priskey has been working with Reid since he was 6. He started in her 8U summer camp. Eight weeks of summer camp turned into 10 weeks of summer camp, which turned into some private lessons during the year in minor hockey and then into twice-a-week skates in recent summers.She figures she has had him on the ice “hundreds” of times.