Jake Stuart signs WHL deal after Clark Cup season in USHL

Lethbridge locked up Jake Stuart on July 6, signing the 2007-born forward to a Western Hockey League scholarship and development agreement after his Clark Cup season in the USHL. Stuart split the 2025-26 campaign between the Muskegon Lumberjacks and Sioux Falls Stampede, posted 16 points in 51 regular-season games and added one assist in 10 playoff games as Sioux Falls finished the job in championship play.

The path mattered as much as the numbers. USHL playoff coverage said Stuart had been traded from Muskegon earlier in the season, then ended up facing his former team in the 2026 Clark Cup Final. Sioux Falls opened the series on May 16 with a 3-1 win, and the matchup moved back to Muskegon for Game 3 on May 22 at Trinity Health Arena. Stuart’s run through that series gave him something more valuable than raw offense: he played meaningful postseason hockey in a pressure series against the club that started his year.

That is the kind of résumé that plays in Lethbridge. The Hurricanes framed Stuart as a two-way forward with character and upside, and the fit was strengthened by the fact that his brother Logan is already involved with the organization. For a 2007-born player, that matters. He is not arriving as a finished product, but as a junior player who has already been tested in a title chase and handled a midseason move without losing his role.

Stuart also carried a University of Denver commitment, which added another layer to his profile. Denver remains one of college hockey’s heavyweight programs under coach David Carle, so the commitment alone signaled that his game was already drawing major attention before the WHL move. Now he has a different route in front of him, and that is the point of the story: a productive USHL stop can raise a player’s value even when the next step is not NCAA hockey.

The USHL has long sold itself as a proving ground, and the numbers back that up. The league says more than 50% of NCAA Division I men’s hockey players and nearly 25% of NHL players have USHL experience, and it says it has produced more than 285 direct NHL Draft picks since 2020. Stuart’s season fit that model cleanly. He left the USHL with a championship ring, a stronger junior résumé and enough traction to make Lethbridge move now.