When the offseason began after the 2024-25 season, Grayson Burzynski had some notion that he might be on the move before 2025-26 began. When he got moved to the team closest to his hometown of Winnipeg, the Brandon Wheat Kings, he was thrilled.
Though the season didn’t end the way he or the team had hoped, the 2005-born defenseman was excited to end his career in his home province. And when he looks back on his career, he said he’ll be proud it includes time as a Wheat King.
“It was nice playing for my hometown team almost. Everyone was great in the organization and I loved all my teammates. It was a really fun year… My first ever WHL game was coming to watch the Wheat Kings. Just being able to wear that jersey was awesome.”
The move to the Wheat Kings didn’t catch Burzynski totally off guard, though it was still a definite change after four years in Swift Current. The change hit home perhaps the hardest when he went back to the IPlex to face the Broncos and went to the visitors’ dressing room for the first time.
“I had kind of thought Brandon was one of the places I would want to play if I ever got traded from Swift. I’m happy that trade did happen, that it was to Brandon. What was weird was going back to Swift as an away team. It was fun but it was weird too.”
Burzynski scored in that first game back in Swift Current, a first-period tally that would prove to be the game winner. It was appropriate for him to score in that building, a building in which he had steadily built himself from a young player learning to be confident with the puck into the nearly point-per-game defenseman he would become. That transformation was one a 16-year-old Burzynski, making his WHL debut in 2021-22, might not have foreseen.
“That player wouldn’t have known what his whole career would look like,” he said. “I don’t know if that player would think he’d be playing as a 20-year-old, or having the success I had offensively. Obviously that was the goal, but I didn’t think at that point that I would. I’d just say (to him) be patient and kind of enjoy every second of it.”
Not only did Burzynski play at 20, he set a new career high with 58 points. His time in Brandon marked a continuation of his rise, which accelerated the year prior when he jumped up from 31 career points in three seasons prior to 47 points in a single campaign.
“What I did in the summer changed,” Burzynski said. “I started working with Brandon’s skills coach, Riley Dudar. What they do, the skills we practice in the summer, it’s all translatable which is really nice. Coming in, I had a lot of confidence playing and making some of those plays. I knew it was in me, I had always played with confidence and offense, but those first few years I didn’t quite have that. Once I started playing with confidence, it started coming out.”
If you ask the Wheat Kings players and coaches what they’ll remember most about Burzynski, however, it will be his sense of humor, his genuine personality, and his value in the dressing room. Fittingly, the player who proved to be such a good locker room presence said he would remember his teammates the most of anything in Brandon.
“Everyone stuck together,” said Burzynski. “That’s why I’m kind of surprised how things turned out. I’m going to remember how close everybody was.”
