Chiefs Colton Bobyk knows his future is on defense

Colton Bobyk thought he might be a forward for life until a midget league coach asked him to step in and play defense during a power play.

Bobyk never returned to forward.

“The coach thought I did a good job back there and he kept me there,” Bobyk said. “Ever since, I’ve been on defense. It was awesome at forward to score goals, but I might make it further on defense.”

The Spokane Chiefs certainly think so. The 18-year-old Bobyk, in his second full season with the Western Hockey League club, plays on the top defensive line with captain Jason Fram.

Bobyk and Fram are especially valuable on the power play, a big concern for the Chiefs as they rank among the bottom third in the league with a success rate of 17.2 percent.

The Chiefs have operated most of the season without Bobyk, who injured his knee during the team’s first practice after training camp. Bobyk missed Spokane’s preseason games and the first nine games of the regular season.

“Now it’s healed up,” Bobyk said. “I’d rather have (the injury) at the start of the year than the middle of the year.”

Outside of a burst appendix suffered during his midget hockey days, Bobyk hasn’t missed a lot of playing time because of injuries.

“It was tough at the start of the year, not to play with those guys,” Bobyk said. “But now that I’ve come back, it’s been awesome. They were ready to go and I had to jump up and get up to game speed because they’d already been playing.”

Bobyk had an assist in his first game back, a 5-4 victory at U.S. Division-leading Everett. That game marked a season high for goals in a game by the Chiefs until Saturday, when Bobyk had his first goal of the season in a 6-4 win, again over Everett.

Spokane’s defense and goaltending, especially the net work of 19-year-old Garret Hughson, have been stingy, allowing 3.0 goals per game. But Bobyk knows the offense (2.9 goals per game) must improve for the Chiefs to stay competitive.

“We outshoot teams, but we just need to finish our chances,” Bobyk said. … “Just give it not too many more games and we’ll figure it out and score a lot more goals. It’s going to be tough for teams to beat us when we have Hughson letting in just one or two goals (per game).”

Bobyk, of Rimbey, Alberta, near Red Deer, grew up on a farm and built an ice rink in his family’s back yard to practice as a kid.

When not focused on hockey, Bobyk loves to golf, as does his entire family – father Len, mother Melanee and 20-year-old sister Caitlyn.

Bobyk made his first big splash during the 2010-11 season, totaling six goals and 15 assists in 33 games for the Red Deer Rebels White Bantam AAA team.

The Chiefs selected Bobyk in the 10th round of the 2011 WHL Bantam Draft. He made his Chiefs debut with two games during the 2012-13 season, and had five goals and seven assists in 56 games last year.