Regina Pats' general manager Dale Derkatch explains how his team acquired Ruslan Karimov.
“It so happened that I had a call from Sarnia Sting’s GM a day or two before they were going to put him on waivers and then see if he got waived because that gentleman Dylan Seca is the GM of the U-17 team that [Maddox] Schultz and [Liam] Pue are on,” Derkatch said on the SportsCage. “We were talking, he had said to me, 'We have a euro that we're going to let go because we have some younger players that need the ice time, so you may want to look at him and see if you'd be interested.' We put in for him and got lucky.”
In two games with the Regiment, Karimov has scored one goal and recorded one assist. Before playing with the Pats, he played three games with the Sting. Last year with Sarnia, Karimov played 66 games, scored 15 goals and registered 14 assists.
Derkatch elaborated on whether the Canadian Hockey League has a waiver wire.
“The CHL doesn't have a waiver wire where it goes out to everybody, which I don't understand why not,” Derkatch said. “Once the players are waived, in the example of the WHL, he is then available for the Quebec League or the Ontario League, so every team should get that information -- I think that's being worked on.”
Another move the Pats made recently was to trade for Carter Kowalyk from the Seattle Thunderbirds in exchange for a seventh-round pick in the 2027 WHL Prospects Draft.
“We had a three-goalie situation and we finally decided to go with [Marek] Schlenker and [Taylor] Tabashnuik. That opened up a 20-year-old spot and then we looked at potentially bringing in a defenceman,” Derkatch recalled. “We had an injury or two and to shore things up, that was the move behind that. [Kowalyk has] experience winning with Edmonton when they won a WHL championship and you need that experience, you have to go through it to get the experience.”
Overall, Kowalyk has played 177 games in the WHL, he has accumulated seven goals and 26 assists along with 218 penalty minutes. He won the WHL championship with the Edmonton Oil Kings in 2022.
The reason why the Pats had an overage spot open was because Regina traded Kelton Pyne to the Vancouver Giants for a sixth-round pick in the 2028 WHL Prospects Draft.
So far in the 2025-2026 season, the Pats are ninth in the WHL’s Eastern Conference with a 2-6-1 record. For the Regiment, the next game on the schedule is hosting the Lethbridge Hurricanes on Wednesday. Dante De Caria will have the pre-game show at 6:30 p.m. on 620 CKRM, and then the game call with puck drop at 7 p.m.
