By Drew Steele / @wooitsdrew / sports@kvsc.org

The United States Hockey League held the first phase of their annual draft on Monday.  The USHL is the only tier one juniors league in the country.

The Tri-City Storm selected August Falloon with their sixth round pick. Falloon, the 85th overall selection, was a crucial part of the St. Cloud Tech-Apollo team in 2019-20.  Falloon put up 46 points in his sophomore season, which was good enough to be the team’s second highest point total.

In similar fashion to the NHL, drafting a player in the USHL Phase I Draft means that a team has the rights to that player. This means that Falloon will still have the option to play for St. Cloud in the winter.

The USHL conducts two phases for their drafting process.  The first phase, the phase in which Falloon was drafted in, is conducted for the future of the league with only players under the age of seventeen being selected.

Although the USHL Draft is usually conducted online, the draft process was a little bit different this year due to COVID-19.  The biggest difference of all was the fact that the combine for birth years 2002 and 2003 were postponed as well as the combine for players born in 2004.

The Tri-City Storm are based out of Kearney, Nebraska.  The Storm were in fourth place in the Western Conference when the season was put on hiatus due to COVID-19.