After the conclusion of his senior season of high school hockey at Rogers, Parker Deschene wasn’t quite sure what his future held in the ranks of junior hockey.

The 5-foot-8 forward scored over 150 points during his three years on varsity with the Royals and he helped propel the squad to its first-ever appearance at the Minnesota Class AA State Tournament in St. Paul in 2025. Outside of high school hockey, Deschene was able to get a little bit of junior hockey experience his senior year after jumping in the lineup for the Minnesota Mallards of the NAHL for a few games in the fall of 2024 and then getting to practice with Omaha of the USHL in the spring of 2025 - but making a full-time junior hockey roster is easier said than done and he wasn’t quite sure where he’d end up after graduation.

Last summer, Deschene went to camp with the Omaha Lancers but eventually wound up getting released so he had to look for some alternative options for his future in hockey. He then got a call from the Danbury Hat Tricks of the NAHL and it seemed like that team and that organization would be a good fit for him to kick off his first full season of junior hockey - so he packed up his bags and moved out to western Connecticut.

“I didn’t know what to think because I was looking at the roster and I didn’t know anybody there and I was out in Connecticut and it was just really real going out there by myself and living in apartments and stuff,” said Deschene, who was moving over 1,000 miles away from home at 18-years-old. It was certainly a bit of a change for the Otsego native, who had grown up in the Rogers area of Minnesota his whole life with his parents and three siblings. Despite the changes that came his way, the forward impressed out on the ice for the Hat Tricks and easily started to draw attention to his game by scoring 12 points (7G, 5A) through 15 games played.

By registering almost a point-per game, some options started to present themselves to the Lindenwood commit. When an opportunity presented itself for Deschene to play junior hockey much closer to home, it felt like a chance that he had to take. The Minnesota Mallards of the NAHL called and said they were interested in the rights of the former Rogers forward and they wound up trading for him in return for forward Gleb Akimov, along with future assets.

The Mallards compete out of the Forest Lake area of Minnesota, which is about a 30-40 minute drive from Rogers, so clearly that was much closer to home than Danbury, Connecticut. It also helped that Deschene already had some familiarity with the organization since he had registered two games with the team in 2024, when he was a senior in high school.

The 5-foot-8 forward continued to score at an impressive pace in the NAHL and earned six goals and three assists, for nine total points, through 12 game with the Mallards in the winter of 2025. This started to draw the attention of teams from other places and other leagues, specifically those in the BCHL.

“My advisor called me after I had a pretty good week [with the Mallards] and he’s like ‘Salmon Arm just called me and was wondering if you wanted to go out there’, and I said sure why not - I’ll give it a try,” Deschene said about another change that came about in his life. He felt positive about the opportunity to move out to the BCHL. Many say that Salmon Arm can be a great place to play junior hockey if you’re a person who enjoys being outdoors because there is beautiful nature and breathtaking mountains all around the area.

The Minnesota native packed up his bags once again and this time moved close to 1,500 miles away from home to join the Silverbacks in January of 2026 and he’s been with the team ever since.

“It’s been pretty fun, it’s been beautiful. Basically everywhere I go here there's a lot of mountains and I just love meeting new people and it’s been a lot of fun,” he said about his experience so far. Deschene says that a lot of the guys on the team go hiking almost every day and that it’s been a very positive experience for the three or so months that he’s been there already, but it has certainly been a learning experience moving up to the BCHL from the NAHL as well.

“I didn’t realize there was a pretty big skill gap. In the NAHL, in the teams that I have been on, there’s a few guys that are pretty good but there’s still a gap [between the top-tier guys and the bottom-tier guys on the roster], but then here [in the BCHL] just like everyone’s got skill,” he said about seeing the depth of the teams in the different leagues. It took Deschene a little while to get used to the new level of competition in the Canadian junior hockey league but he has now posted four points through 15 games with Salmon Arm.

“Personally I think this has been one of my biggest learning seasons that I’ve had as an individual but team-wise I think we’ve come a long way and we’re gonna make a pretty good push I feel like,” he said about how the Silverbacks are feeling heading into playoffs. Salmon Arm recently swept Trail in the first round of the playoffs, 4-0, and are now headed into Round 2 against Cranbrook this weekend. “We’re a pretty gritty team and we’re a really fast team… we make you pay for whatever you do.”

While it’s been an adjustment for Deschene to adapt up into the level of junior hockey and he says that he has learned a lot this year about himself as an individual, he has plenty of accolades from his time at Rogers to look back on that prove his potential to be an incredibly strong hockey player in the future.

The Otsego native joined the Royals varsity roster as a sophomore and didn’t waste any time in impressing out on the ice as his 46 points that season were the third-most on the entire squad.

“It was pretty tough mentally because there were so many older guys and it was a way more mature game than how bantams was and there was just a lot of adjusting to do going up from bantams and playing with the older guys,” Deschene said about his first year up on varsity. It did help though that there was a good crop of other very talented players that moved up to varsity the same year as Deschene, such as Mason Jenson and Nolen Geerdes, so they all got to go through and experience the same things together.

In Year 2 of high school hockey, Deschene impressed in the Upper Midwest High School Elite league prior to starting his junior year and then went on to score 42 points through 27 games later that season.

“I think it was a lot different [his junior year] - because growing up I was watching Sam Ranallo play and it was great then getting to play with him [as a sophomore] and obviously points-wise playing with him it helped because he gets on the stat sheet a lot and then I didn’t have a guy like that my junior year other than Mason Jenson but he got hurt [and missed about 8 games that season], so points-wise it was a lot harder to produce my own stuff,” he said about scoring slightly less in Year 2 than he did in Year 1.

While posting such strong statistics as both a sophomore and junior in high school, Deschene had started talking with various Division I hockey programs. A good amount of schools reached out to the forward but many seemed hesitant to take a chance on his game, considering that he is a bit of an undersized guy at 5-foot-8. Eventually, Deschene came in contact with Lindenwood University and they told him that they loved the way that he played and that they thought that he could really be an impact player for their program in the future.

The Rogers skater eventually announced his commitment to Lindenwood in the summer before his senior year of high school. He loved the coaching staff there and everything about the program, which is located in the suburbs of St. Louis.

“I am very honored and blessed to announce my commitment to play Division I hockey at Lindenwood University and further my education. I would like to thank God, my family and friends who have got me to this point. #golions” Deschene posted to his social media pages in August of 2024.

The forward committed to the Lions program under previous head coach Bill Muckalt, who is now at Michigan Tech, but when Lindenwood hired current head coach Keith Fisher in 2025, Deschene felt okay to stay on as a Lions commit since he already had some familiarity with Fisher since the two had previously talked a bit during the recruiting process when Fisher was at Penn State.

With a Division I commitment under his belt, Deschene likely could have decided to forgo his senior season of high school hockey at Rogers for the likes of junior hockey somewhere but instead he chose to finish what he started and return to the Royals team for one more year. The Rogers skater said that the entire team was hungry for more and that they had a goal of making it to the state tournament for the first time in program history and he obviously wanted to help the squad achieve that goal.

The Royals went 23-5-2 overall in 2024-25 and Deschene scored a whopping 19G, 55A through 28 games played that season. It wasn’t easy, but Rogers did end up achieving their goal and defeating Champlin Park, 4-3, in the Section 5AA championship match to make the organizations first-ever appearance at the Class AA state tournament in 2025.

“It was one of the best experiences of my life, if not the best,” said Deschene about winning the section final and getting to go to state with his teammates. “Getting a police escort out of our rink [to go to state] and the whole community was there and cheering for as we were in the bus driving to the rink. Once we got to state and I first stepped out on the ice I was just looking up at everything and you just forget how many people are there and it’s just crazy.”

Unfortunately, Rogers fell in a tight overtime contest to Edina in the Class AA quarterfinal round, but that doesn’t take anything away from the incredible achievement that Deschene and his teammates had in just getting to the state tournament in the first place that season.

Looking back on that roster for the Royals, it was an unbelievably talented team loaded with Division I talent, including Deschene (Lindenwood), Nolen Geerdes (Western Michigan), Mason Jenson (Ohio State), Brock Cheslock (Augustana), Jackson Smithknecht (Colorado College) and Jayden Kurtz (Wisconsin). That’s certainly a roster that Minnesota hockey fans will look back on in the future and won’t believe the amount of talent that was on the ice in 2024-25 for the Royals.

Flash forward to 2026, Deschene is currently focused on his postseason run with his teammates in Salmon Arm as they prepare for Round 2 of the BCHL playoffs. Being just 19-years-old, it is currently up in the air on when the Rogers skater will eventually enter the ranks of college hockey for Lindenwood but whenever he does he is considering majoring in something like business or finance.

For those who aren’t familiar with his game, Deschene might be a bit of an undersized guy out on the ice but he certainly doesn’t play like it. “I’m a smaller forward but I’m pretty solid on the puck so if a guy tries to like blow me up, if I see them coming, I don’t really move that much and I’ll reverse hit them and I see the ice pretty well. If I get chances I like to think that I score them a majority of the time and I like to find open guys and play with speed,” he said about the strengths of his playing style.

Salmon Arm plays Game 1 in a best-of-seven Round 2 series in the BCHL playoffs on April 17 at home at Rogers Rink.

MORE FROM APX NEWS: