So close, yet so far…
A clean bill of health seemed just a few short days away for the Brandon Wheat Kings before their loss to the Swift Current Broncos. Then, during that game, Carter Klippenstein left with an upper body injury. It’s enough to make you marvel at the run of bad luck this team has had, and maybe use a few words that I wouldn’t dare print in this blog or say on-air.
Klippenstein’s injury is not looking to be long-term however, and other players are now just days away from a return to the lineup. Marty Murray had hinted that reinforcements were on the way even as far back as the game in Swift Current, and not a moment too soon.
We’ve talked ad nauseum about the constrictive Eastern Conference playoff race, and the picture remains clear as mud. The Wheat Kings are three points back of the Prince Albert Raiders for top spot in the division, with a game in hand and with the season series secured. Meantime, the Wheat Kings and Saskatoon Blades once again have absolutely identical records, still with two games in Brandon to be played between the two teams. Everything remains up in the air.
The Wheat Kings could hardly have picked a better time to get some badly needed reinforcements.
- First up, the unqualified good news: both Luke Shipley and Jaxon Jacobson have shed the no-contact sweaters they’d been wearing at practice for the last week, and it seems very likely these are two of the guys Marty Murray was referring to when he said he expected to get some help for tomorrow’s game. While praise is due for the players who filled in during their absence (especially Gio Pantelas, who played well beyond his years filling in for Shipley on the top defense pairing) it’s still a huge relief to potentially get those guys back. Shipley is the team’s number one defenseman on the right side for a reason, and even having missed time he still leads the d-corps in goals and points. He and Jacobson will also both represent a shot in the arm for the team’s power play, as they bring a combined 23 points on the power play (out of their 81 points overall) back into the equation.
- More good news on the injury front: Roger McQueen is skating in a red no-contact sweater and looking good. It’s obvious his time away from the ice hasn’t nullified his exceptional shot, as it was on full display at practice today. The team isn’t yet ready to announce a definite return date, but it’s now a matter of when, not if, McQueen plays again this season. And judging by the way he was skating today, it won’t be long. No, he won’t play tomorrow against the Edmonton Oil Kings unless something changes dramatically between now and then (the news isn’t quite that good) but he’s getting closer. McQueen’s draft stock has undeniably suffered a bit of a hit with all the time he’s missed, but if he comes back from his injury looking good, and with enough time to remind scouts why he was at one time challenging for first overall in this draft, he’ll bump that stock right back up.
- McQueen’s impending return, and that of Shipley and Jacobson (and Merrek Arpin, for that matter, who is also skating with the team again) brings not only a huge sigh of relief but also a modicum of frustration. Marty expressed this on the postgame show after the loss to Swift Current, that the team has been keeping pace and then some in the Eastern Conference all while horribly depleted up front, and its frustrating to think where they might be had they been healthy all along. Every conversation I’ve had with my fellow broadcasters for the past two weeks has begun with some variation of “Boy, you guys sure are banged up, eh?” A few teams around the league can sympathize with the Wheat Kings (the Medicine Hat Tigers and Everett Silvertips have their own extensive list of injured bodies) but you can’t help but wonder, with how well this team is playing right now, how good they could be if they’d been healthy all season. In fact, since the team hasn’t really been healthy since the acquisition of Jordan Gavin, Marty hasn’t yet gotten to see the forward corps he put together really work at its full power. Now, that is a frustrating thought, but as Quinn Mantei told me, it’s also an exciting one. How good is this team going to be if they ever catch a break health-wise? I’ll say this: those same broadcasters who shook their heads in amazement at the Wheat Kings’ injury list all followed it up with the same sentiment: some variation of “you guys are going to be scary once you’re healthy”. More than a few opposing coaches have told me the same.
- So how good are the Wheat Kings going to be once they get healthy? Well, look at it this way: once Roger McQueen returns, as now seems inevitable, the team’s four centremen are McQueen, Nolan Flamand, Dominik Petr, and Jaxon Jacobson. Three of those four players are over a point per game, and Jacobson is only just under it. No other team in the WHL even comes close to matching that depth at centre, and even if one of those players goes down then another near-point-per-game guy (Matteo Michels) is ready to slide right in, having filled in regularly at centre this season and won more than 50 percent of his draws. If championship forward groups are built from the centre out, the Wheat Kings have a championship caliber forward group.
- Speaking of which, an impressive stat for the Wheat Kings, courtesy the wizard of junior hockey statistics Geoffrey Brandow (by the way, if you’re not following him on Twitter you’re missing out): the team sits seventh in the WHL in faceoff percentage at 50.68. It was something I noticed when preparing the more in-depth statistics before the game against the Broncos, the Wheat Kings seem to have more guys above 50 percent than most other teams (Swift Current had only two, whereas the Wheat Kings have six). Now, that’s partially a function of so many guys having to fill in at centre (McQueen is far from the only man in the middle who’s missed time) but it’s impressive just how many of them have done so well there. The Wheat Kings’ top man in the dot by percentage? Rookie Ben Binder Nord, who comes in at an impressive 55.4 percent in the circle.
- If you’re talking about consistency in the faceoff circle, however, you have to start in the same place the Wheat Kings have looked for consistency and found it for the majority of the season. There haven’t been too many constants on the Wheat Kings’ roster with so many guys in and out with injury, but one has been Nolan Flamand. He missed opening night as the team was still working on its overage situation at that time, and since then he’s played every game and taken over 1000 faceoffs, winning 51.4 percent of them. Oh, and he just became the first Wheat King this season to hit 60 points, a total that would’ve led the team in scoring last season too. I’ll pose the same question here I posed on Twitter: with 13 games to go, could Flamand hit 80 points? It sure doesn’t seem impossible.
- Stepping away from the Wheat Kings for a moment, I absolutely love what the WHL has planned for the 2025 preseason with exhibition games between the Medicine Hat Tigers and Kelowna Rockets to take place in Whitehorse, Yukon. Major stick taps to the league for making this happen. Growing the game is huge, and you’ll never get a better vessel for growing that game than bringing Gavin McKenna back to his hometown to put on a show for what I’m sure will be a raucous Yukon crowd. And getting the Memorial Cup hosts involved too? The WHL picked their teams and their spot brilliantly. The logistics behind this are going to be crazy, no two ways about it; veteran broadcaster Regan Bartel of the Kelowna Rockets said on Twitter it was about a 26-hour bus ride from Kelowna to Whitehorse so one has to imagine they’ll be flying. But this is going to be such a feel-good event and will bring such positive attention to the league, its players, and the sport as a whole, that I can’t help but applaud it. And you just know McKenna (who is a good bet to score on any given night) will get a goal in his hometown. At that moment, there won’t be a better place to be in all the hockey world than Whitehorse.
There are only 13 games remaining for the Wheat Kings and by winning percentage (here again, I must thank Geoffrey Brandow), the Wheat Kings have a relatively easy remaining schedule with their average opponent having a winning percentage just over .500. That, however, is a somewhat misleading statistic. The Wheat Kings opponents from here on swing wildly to either side of that marker, with Lethbridge, Calgary, and Medicine Hat all on the docket in the next two weeks and multiple games against Regina and Moose Jaw to close out the season. By that time, the playoff race will still, no doubt, be in full swing. And teams that sit further down the standings do so love to play spoiler.
March is only four days away. The playoffs are now just a month off. It’s crunch time.
