Like many kids, Ephram McNutt was fascinated by planes and trains as a child.
Unlike many kids, he spent much of his time high above some of the northernmost regions of Canada in a small turboprop plane.
The Regina Pats defenceman was born in Yellowknife and has grown up living in smaller centres of the Northwest Territories like Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk, where his mom, Holly, was stationed with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
“A lot of them are fly-in unless you can drive in on the ice roads,” McNutt explained. “But in the summer it’s flying only, and, really, in the winter it’s mainly flying only as well. Being a little kid going on the little RCMP planes with the RCMP pilots, that was a really cool thing I got to experience.
They have a really cool air services program with the RCMP. They have a really impressive helicopter and plane fleet. Being at some of the Northern postings with Mom, we were in police planes quite a bit. So I think that exposure to smaller planes, more than a normal person would have had, is definitely something that kind of sparked it.”
Now 20 years old, that spark of interest has turned into an impressive passion for McNutt.
His family is now based in Red Deer, Alta. and he’s been working towards his pilot license at a nearby flight school in Lacombe.
He already has more than 35 solo flight hours under his belt, working mostly in a Cessna 172 and Piper Cherokee.
“I think it’s so huge being able to get up in the air,” McNutt added. “You’re seeing a perspective that no one else would see. Even in Red Deer, or at least in Lacombe, you can be in the mountains in a couple of hours in a car, but you can be in the mountains in half an hour in a small plane. Just seeing the perspective, seeing the roads from up above, or seeing a different angle of the mountains or something is just so cool. Even flying over my house for the first time was a really neat thing.”
McNutt is 10 solo flight hours away from earning his full license- something he hopes to complete in the offseason.
In the meantime, he’s studying hard in the Pats’ school area at the rink, poring over flight paths and barometric pressure maps.
“He’s got a map that’s about the size of a small dinner table that he’s constantly poring over with his, whatever the measurement thing is called,” Pats Education Advisor Dwayne Hinger said. “He’s constantly doing that.”
Despite joining the Pats in mid-December, Hinger says McNutt has quickly established himself as a leader on the ice and in class with his younger teammates.
McNutt was also recognized as the team’s Most Sportsmanlike Player as part of the 2024-25 Pats Player Awards.
“I think that the guys see it on the ice, and I think that’s a great transfer to when he comes into the classroom,” Hinger added. “We have obviously, a bunch of younger guys, 16, 17-year-olds, and when they see him and see how hard he works when he comes in here and how focused he is, I think that it’s nothing but positive for them to see that, and it rubs off.
He’ll talk to guys about their courses and he’s even offered to help them with things like that. He’s such a leader, he’s such a mature person for his age.”
McNutt currently looks at flying as more of a hobby than a career path, but says the door is still open to looking at additional courses to work for a major airline.
Because he’s still playing, the Pats have covered his flight school costs without it counting against the three years of school coverage he’s currently accrued through the WHL Scholarship.
But he does have one big plan once he receives his full license.
“We’ve talked about it lots,” McNutt’s two-time teammate and billet brother Caden Brown said. “Once he gets his full license, I’d love him take me up… We’ve talked about it with one of our other buddies, (Los Angeles Kings prospect) Koehn Ziemmer in Prince George, we want to get him to take us up north and go on a big fishing trip soon as he gets his license.”
