As Mark Twain once said, history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes. Now it’s up to the Brandon Wheat Kings to decide what verse they’re going to base their season off of.
For example, last season the Medicine Hat Tigers started off the campaign 1-4 through their first five games. This included three straight losses to the Red Deer Rebels and a fourth loss to the Moose Jaw Warriors. Oddly enough, by the end of the season, most people had forgotten that. No prizes for guessing why.
On the other hand, last season the Wheat Kings missed the division title by a single point. And while you can gain or lose a single point at any time during a 68-game season, you can pinpoint the exact moment the Wheat Kings lost a point to the Prince Albert Raiders (the eventual division champions) specifically: a home game on November 9 when they held a multi-goal lead in the third period but still lost in overtime. Brandon won the season series with a 4-1-1 record but that game still stands out as an unfortunate turning point. If the Wheat Kings hold that lead, they win the division last season. It’s as simple as that.
That’s part of why the Wheat Kings (and their broadcaster) were so frustrated by the controversial game-winning overtime goal the Raiders scored on Saturday night. At the end of the season, one point can be a huge deal. But the Wheat Kings were in these sorts of situations last season more than once (an offside goal against Prince George, a questionable video review against Red Deer, etc.) and the lesson they eventually took from those games after the initial frustration had died down was: don’t leave games in the hands of outside forces to begin with. As was the case in last year’s loss on November 9, the Wheat Kings opened the third period on Saturday night with a multi-goal lead.
So, one way or another, history is going to rhyme. Either the Wheat Kings, like last year’s Tigers, are going to bury a tough start so deeply in people’s memory that even to bring it up feels like wasted words, or they’re going to be looking back longingly at a single point that got away from them early in the season.
It’s up to them to write the next verse, and they’ve got lots of paper left to work with.
- On a team loaded with veteran firepower and with plenty of those veterans having strong offensive starts, it’s quite something to see 16-year-old rookie Chase Surkan not only leading the team in scoring but the entire conference, and two points off the league lead overall. It’s a lot to expect of any rookie, never mind one of the youngest players in the league, but Surkan’s patience with the puck, awareness of where to be on the ice to score, and shooting ability once he gets there, have made him offensively dangerous right out of the gate. An underrated part of Surkan’s early season scoring: he’s made the power play a lot more dangerous too. One thing I’ve noticed is that smart puck movers like Jordan Gavin and Jaxon Jacobson can make hard, pro-caliber passes to him and he’ll be able to anticipate them and handle them. That’s a big part of the reason the Wheat Kings’ power play is 4-for-7 on the season.
- The numbers won’t leap off the page, but Saturday night against Prince Albert was a big bounce back game for Jayden Kraus. He made some incredible, highlight-reel stops and helped the Wheat Kings kill off the first four power plays against, including a five-minute major right at the start of the third period. He was far too busy all things considered (no team is ever going to be happy giving up 45 shots) but after a tough opening weekend, his overall performance was a step in the right direction. I’ve had several people tell me since that game that they felt Kraus should’ve been a star of the night. Remembering how many circus saves he turned in, stifling odd man rushes and cross-seam one-timers long enough for the Wheat Kings to build a lead, I can see why people felt that way about his performance.
- On the subject of goaltending, a long-awaited arrival has finally happened for the Wheat Kings. Import goaltender Filip Ruzicka has at last touched down in Brandon, and has already begun practicing with the team. When I spoke to goalie coach Tyler Plante over the summer he was very excited to be bringing Ruzicka in, and while the timeline wasn’t what anyone had hoped for, he’s in Brandon now. I’ve seen him at practice now, and so much of what makes him such an intriguing player was on display. He’s enormous in net, nearly as tall in butterfly as some of the forwards around him are when they stand upright, and despite his size he moves like a cat. His agility belies his size, and while he’s naturally going to need time to adjust to a new setting and a new style of play, all the tools are there for him to be an excellent pickup.
- As one player arrives, so another departs. It’s tough to see the team release high-energy forward Ben Binder Nord, who I’ve found to be as good of a kid off the ice as he is tough of an opponent on it. As he hadn’t yet dressed this season, and as an influx of young forwards seemed destined to push someone out, you wondered where the chips were going to fall with him. Ben was a great story, who spent his first training camp with the team driving everyone he could find crazy on the ice and kept it right up in his second camp and into his first season. A hard-working, respectful, easy to deal with guy, he’ll be missed. I don’t know where he’s going from here now that he’s been released by the team, but wherever he goes will be lucky to have him.
- That’s not the only lineup change for the Wheat Kings for a tough weekend ahead. Grayson Burzynski has been suspended two games for his crosscheck to the head of Riley Boychuk in Saturday’s loss to the Raiders. The Wheat Kings killed the power play off without anything overwhelming, but as Marty Murray pointed out on the post-game show, it left guys tired out and probably contributed to the Raiders eventually tying the score. Now the Wheat Kings will have to do without Burzynski, by far their most experienced defenseman, against two tough opponents, two opponents that you can expect them to be battling it out all season long against in the Eastern Conference standings.
- On the subject of those opponents, the two teams everyone seemed to think were poised to be the teams to beat in the East this season were the Wheat Kings and their Saturday night opponent, the Edmonton Oil Kings. There will be no opportunities for sleepiness in the matchup with Edmonton. They’re possibly the only team in the East that can match the Wheat Kings forward group, as they come with impressive depth of their own and a group of headliners that includes three NHL-drafted players (curiously, all imports: Max Curran who was drafted by the Colorado Avalanche, Adam Jecho by the St. Louis Blues, and Miroslav Holinka by the Toronto Maple Leafs). That’s without even mentioning Gavin Hodnett, always one of their most skilled forwards and one who loves to play in Brandon, just up the road from his hometown of Winnipeg. Like the Wheat Kings, they’re also physically imposing on the back end with a ton of size, and two of their defensemen are NHL draft picks as well. With all the firepower on both sides, this is a matchup I would say a neutral fan would be well served to seek out. It has game-of-the week written all over it.
- That’s not to say the Wheat Kings can write off their Sunday opponent, the Saskatoon Blades, however. The Blades (who played the Raiders very close on their opening weekend series and finished 1-1) have a lot of forward depth themselves, and while they don’t necessarily have the Oil Kings’ explosive talent at the top, this is a team that will roll multiple scoring lines as well as or better than anyone else in the league. Last season, the Wheat Kings and Blades played about the closest season series possible, with the Wheat Kings winning it only by virtue of having suffered two of their four losses in overtime. It was also a series heavily dominated by the road teams, so home ice advantage didn’t end up mattering much. Of note, this game will mark the return of Dominik Petr to ACU Place after an offseason trade sent him to the Blades. He’s a heady player who will come in motivated to burn his old team, so the Wheat Kings will need to be aware of his all-20-year-old line with Tyler Parr and Rowan Calvert.
- One thing both the Blades and Oil Kings (and the Wheat Kings too, for that matter) have in common: each of their last games featured another mouthguard related ten-minute misconduct. After the Wheat Kings had three of them on opening weekend (the only three such penalties of that weekend) I wondered if I’d seen a one-off and apparently the answer was no. If heavier enforcement of an existing rule is on offer this year, I suppose growing pains would be inevitable but I have to be honest: so far I find these penalties more than a little obnoxious. I don’t doubt they’re happening for a reason, just as I don’t doubt players will adjust eventually and the number of penalties will go down. Still, it was a little galling when, for example, the Wheat Kings were trying to claw back into a tie against Moose Jaw and had to do so without one of their top offensive players in Jaxon Jacobson because he was in the penalty box for ten minutes over a mouthguard violation. Hopefully the growing pains (would it be too on the nose of me to call them teething problems?) get sorted out as soon as possible. Nobody wants to see their team’s best players sitting in the box for ten minutes at a time.
It’s too early in the season to be referring to a weekend as pivotal, but it sure does feel like the Wheat Kings could change the whole tone of the early season with a good weekend against two good teams. It would do a lot for team confidence and, of course, do a lot for the team in the standings. As we’ve established, points gained and lost at the beginning of a season look no different in the standings from those gained and lost at the end.
Then too, the Wheat Kings are on a season-long six-game homestand right now. They definitely want to make those games count, because you know that other shoe has to drop eventually.
