The Kamloops Blazers’ calculus with their first-round pick in the 2023 WHL US Prospect Draft was this: “I’m not sure if it makes sense to pick somebody that we project to be a third-line guy when (JP) Hurlbert is sitting there.”That’s the way head coach and general manager Shaun Clouston remembers then-Blazers head scout Robbie Sandland (now an amateur scout with the Pittsburgh Penguins) putting it to him.Hurlbert, it was widely known, “was a long shot” — a star with the Dallas Stars Elite U14 AAA team who’d just registered 112 goals and 195 points in 75 games and was bound for the Youth Olympics and then, surely, the U.S. NTDP.But it was the 20th pick in the draft, and so Clouston and Sandland played the risk-reward, knowing they liked the player and having had at least some conversations with his representatives at CAA.Over the next couple of years, they tried twice to get him into camp. The family, “always really good” about it, got back to them each time with some version of “Thanks for the invitation, but school is starting.”Then one day, something changed. It was just before the midway point of his U17 season at the program, and Clouston got word from another CAA client and Blazers forward, Nathan Behm, that things may not have been going quite as well for Hurlbert as they’d hoped. From that point on, the Blazers kept in close contact with Hurlbert’s reps, and when his season ended, they reached back out.A few months later, he finally accepted one of those invites to camp, leaving the national program to play his draft year in Kamloops.He wasn’t the first to make the decision — fellow University of Michigan commit William Horcoff had left the program that Christmas and seen his draft stock improve in the second half, and longtime friend and former Spring Creek Academy classmate Cullen Potter had also left for Arizona State — but his wasn’t to accelerate into college. Instead, he took the now-available CHL option.A season later, that decision has paid dividends.He scored a hat trick in his WHL debut. He was named an alternate captain for the Blazers and Team CHL against his old teammates from the NTDP in the CHL USA Prospects Challenge. When that series rolled around at the end of November, he sat atop the WHL in scoring with 44 points in 25 games. He finished the year fourth in league scoring with 42 goals and 97 points in 68 games. As the Blazers’ go-to guy from the start, he commonly put 7-9 pucks on net in games and finished second in the WHL with 294 shots on goal.After entering his draft year viewed as a potential second-round pick, the 6-foot, 190-pound forward (he’s listed as a left winger but started the year as a center and took 361 draws for the Blazers) finished it as NHL Central Scouting’s 12th-ranked North American skater.Hurlbert routinely had 7-9 shots on goal per game for Kamloops. (Brian Johnson / WHL)Hurlbert said he made the decision to leave the program for Kamloops for the “opportunity” that came with it, and called the opening-up of the CHL path for college-bound players “a great thing for hockey, honestly.”“The CHL is such a great league, and the NCAA is right there with it. Now it’s the best of both worlds,” he said.Clouston and his staff also instilled confidence in him right away, he said. But Clouston gives all of the credit for Hurlbert’s breakout season to him. Even the “A,” Clouston insisted, came from his peers. After meeting every Monday throughout camp with his returning leaders to ask them, “Who else do we need to have in this group?” they all kept coming back with Hurlbert’s name.