The best part of junior hockey, some would say the entire point, is the improvement. Watching players go from tentative rookies to dominant veterans is one of the little joys of my job, and sometimes you don’t have to wait very long to see big improvements. Which is good, because sometimes you can’t afford to.
The Wheat Kings know they needed to improve after their slow start. It was the worst ten-game start for the team in the modern era, and it’s hard to do much better than that when you start 0-4-1. But since those opening ten games, the Wheat Kings have gone 8-4-0. Improvement indeed.
Perhaps nowhere was that improvement more evident than the team’s most recent 3-2 win over the Saskatoon Blades. The deck seemed stacked against them, road weary, banged up, and fighting the bevy of illnesses inherent with this time of the year, and up against a Blades team that had rattled off four straight wins. They had to face that battle without their captain and their leading scorer, two-thirds of their top line. Their response? A gritty win in a 3-2 game in which they proved they don’t need to score eight goals in order to come out on top. After the game, Marty Murray said one aspect of that game that was especially important was the team proving to themselves they could win those types of games (which get all the more common as you get into playoff season) as well as the track meets they’d been winning before that.
Looking at the standings, however, it doesn’t seem like the Wheat Kings gained a lot of ground for a solid week in which they won two out of three in Saskatchewan. That’s partly because they’ve still got games in hand on the teams around them, partly because, once again, the Eastern Conference is a dogfight. The middle is as clogged as ever, and could get even more so once both the Wheat Kings and Calgary Hitmen get a few more games under their belts. Meanwhile, at the bottom, nobody is out of the running yet; the last place team is a grand total of four points out of a playoff spot. And the biggest dominos still haven’t fallen on the trade front (more on that in a minute).
Improvement is critical in a junior hockey season, and the Wheat Kings sure picked a good time to show a lot of it.
- The win in Saskatoon reminded me in many ways of a win two years ago in Prince Albert when the Wheat Kings came in with the deck stacked against them and rallied together for a gutsy victory. As I said of that win in Prince Albert at the time, the win over Saskatoon will become as important as the team makes it. If they rattle off a lot of wins in the next month or so, people will look back at that win over Saskatoon and say “that’s where it really started”. If they apply the lessons from that win, they can look at it as a turning point in their season. Of course, it’s up to them to make it into that. Marty and I have talked a lot about the ability to put a loss behind you quickly in junior hockey but maybe it’s a good thing the Wheat Kings have some time to sit with this win and really digest it. Not least because that time allows them to get healthier.
- The win in Saskatoon also doesn’t happen without a tremendous performance from Jordan Gavin, one that Marty called his best game as a Wheat King. Now, Jordan has had enough good games this season that there is some stiff competition for that title, but I would have to agree. It wasn’t just the goals, both of which were fit for the highlight reel. Jordan was all over the puck, causing the Blades fits especially in the third when they were trying to get back in it. When the Wheat Kings needed goals, he led the way. When they needed steady defensive play, he led the way there too. With two top forwards out, Gavin couldn’t have picked a better time to step up. Something else I noticed: his second goal saw him beat the defenders with some quick feet, something we’ve seen him do much more this season. Gavin said he wanted to get quicker in the offseason but I think he’s even quicker now than he was when the season began, and that’s a major boost to an already impressive offensive arsenal.
- The headliner of the victory in Saskatoon, however, was Filip Ruzicka. That was not his busiest night as a Wheat King but the saves he made felt like the most important. If you’re going to win a road game when you’re beaten up as the Wheat Kings were, you need a gritty effort from everyone who’s healthy and you need your goaltender to make some big saves and maybe even “steal one” as the saying goes. Ruzicka was instrumental in that Wheat Kings win. In the same vein, Jayden Kraus was solid the previous night in Prince Albert, stopping 28 of 31 shots he faced. Offensively gifted as they are, the Wheat Kings don’t need dominant goaltending to win hockey games, just steady goaltending. If they get those kinds of performances more often, this team is going to win far, far more than they lose the rest of the way.
- A couple of guys I thought had quieter but still solid games against Saskatoon and actually pretty good weekends overall: Nick Johnson and Nigel Boehm. Both guys picked up assists on Jordan Gavin’s goals in Saskatoon but to me there was more to it than that. Johnson looks disruptive out there, and I mean that in the best possible way; teams seem to have trouble breaking out against him and he breaks up their cycles very well once they get into the Wheat Kings’ zone. After the game in Saskatoon, Marty praised both his and his linemates’ work in the offensive zone specifically saying they “did a lot of heavy lifting”. Nigel was physical in both games and has been quietly putting together a strong season since a rough start. He was well below even at one time but now sits with six assists and a plus-five rating through 20 games. For a guy who isn’t relied upon for offense, that’s a perfectly solid stat line. He’d want the delay of game minor in Saskatoon back I’m sure, but no harm came of it and it shouldn’t dampen what was a strong weekend and really a strong run of games for him over the last two weeks.
- On the subject of the penalty kill, that was perhaps the biggest area of improvement of all for Brandon this past weekend, and not just in Saskatoon. Now it’s true the PK was used far more often than the team would like, with 13 kills in the last two games, but if you’re going to take penalties you’d better kill them and a PK that had been operating at less than two-thirds going into the week is now above 70 percent after they went 12-for-13 on the kill through the weekend. On the surface, the Wheat Kings would seem to be a fairly heavily penalized team (309 PIMS puts them third in the conference) until you remember they’ve got more fighting majors than any other team in the Eastern Conference with 14 and that accounts for the gap in PIMS between them and several other teams. Regardless, the penalty kill was in need of a good weekend and I’d say that’s exactly what it got in Prince Albert and Saskatoon. In fact, if you tack on the game in Moose Jaw as the unofficial third game of the road trip, the Wheat Kings went 15-for-17 on the kill throughout the week, or an 88.2 percent kill rate.
- Some fans have asked me if I see the Wheat Kings as making any big moves this season, and while I think that would be well within the parameters they’ve already set for themselves in acquiring Grayson Burzynski and Luke Mistelbacher (who are fighting for the league leads in points by a defenseman and goals respectively) I can’t help but notice things are quieter on the trade front across the league. As of this writing, there have been 27 transactions since the start of the season according to the WHL website. This time last year there had been 37 and by the end of November last season there had been more than 40 (including the Tanner Howe trade). Teams seem almost to be waiting for Kelowna to run out of first round picks before making big splashes (for which I can hardly blame them; the Rockets still have enough draft capital to win just about any bidding war but they have used a lot of their picks). This season, it also still feels like there are a few dominos everyone around the league is waiting on. Popular speculation centres around the fate of Harrison Brunicke in Kamloops upon his return from Pittsburgh (he was sent to the AHL for a conditioning assignment recently) but I have to ask, with Kamloops tied for fourth place (one point back of third) in the Western Conference are they going to move him at all? And if so, what will that package have to look like? And once Kelowna finally runs out of draft picks to play with for this season, which teams will step up? One final, utterly unique question looming over any and all trade speculation: who, if anyone, is going to follow Rylan Gould back from the NCAA? There’s more in the mix this season than there’s been in years past and it’s making the really big trades seemingly tougher to pull off.
- Best of luck this week to Gio Pantelas at the CHL-U.S. showcase games in Calgary and Lethbridge! It’s been interesting to watch the way the wider hockey world has reacted to Gio this season. He wasn’t talked about too much on the early season draft rankings (mostly because the majority of those stop after the first round and some don’t even go beyond the top ten). But as time has gone on, the lists have gotten more extensive and Gio has climbed steadily up them. He was ranked 39th in the first ranking of the season by The Athletic, squeaked into the first round on Daily Faceoff’s list, and then climbed as high as 20th overall on the list provided by McKeen’s. Craig Buttons’ most recent list had him in the second round again, but I can’t help but notice the general upward trend across all lists for Gio. Something about a big, mobile, right-shot defenseman who skates well, hits hard, and moves the puck effectively just speaks to people I guess. Seriously, don’t be surprised if he’s in the first round on a lot more lists by season’s end. As for the coming games against the Americans, he could use them as a coming out party but frankly, I don’t think he needs to. The best thing for the style of defenseman he projects as at the next level would be for Gio to play a steady, reliable game. Something tells me he’s going to do quite well at that.
- In his second U18 AAA season, Brady Turko absolutely shot up the scoring ranks with the Brandon AAA Wheat Kings. Easten Turko looks to be on track to do something similar. With 28 points in 20 games, he’s just six off last year’s point total (which he amassed in 46 games). We’ve been giving a lot of love on this blog to Ethan Young (he’s still leading the Saskatchewan U18 AAA ranks in scoring, if you’re wondering) but it’s worth remembering the Wheat Kings have not one but two defenseman from that 2024 draft that look poised to easily outplay their draft position.
When a team only has one game in any given week, that game takes on greater importance as you’ve got to sit with the result of it, good or bad, for longer. And with the game in question being against the East Division leading Prince Albert Raiders, they of exactly one regulation loss all season through 21 games, it’s got a double dose of elevated importance. There’s no better test of the improvements the Wheat Kings have shown throughout the season than to face off with the team with the best points percentage in the WHL. It will be a fascinating game to watch, no doubt.
