The 2020 WHL Prospects Draft was a remarkably talent-laden class of young players. Four players from that class were first rounders in both the WHL and NHL drafts, and half of the first round in 2020 is either drafted, signed, or both by an NHL team.
And yet, one of the most prolific players from the 2005 birth year went completely overlooked on the day of the draft. In hindsight, that didn’t seem to slow him down very much.
Luke Mistelbacher finishes his WHL career with 110 goals and 250 points over just four full seasons. The last two years in particular he was among the most potent snipers in the league, amassing 42 goals in 2025-26 as a member of the Brandon Wheat Kings.
“It’s a lot of fun and it goes by so quickly,” Mistelbacher said of his WHL career. “It’s cliche, everyone says it, but it truly does go by quickly… When I came up to the Western League, you get the puck and it feels like you have no time, everything is so fast. Now I’m so much more comfortable. It’s a big change as you get older.”
Many things certainly changed for Mistelbacher during his WHL career. He went from a camp invitee to a back-to-back 40-goal scorer. He went from being a young player trying to find his footing to a power play fixture on playoff calibre teams. And last offseason, he went from Swift Current to Brandon, where he would finish off his WHL career.
“It was awesome,” Mistelbacher said of his final season in the league and only season as a Wheat King. “I liked the smaller town/city kind of thing. Swift Current, obviously, was smaller and I enjoyed that. I met some great people, made some really good friends… It felt like home. It’s kind of a farm town, and where I grew up, my dad was a rancher so it felt comfortable, like home.”
As familiar and friendly as Brandon was, that didn’t mean there was no adjustment to being a Wheat King. After all, Mistelbacher had been part of some intense, downright vicious games between the Wheat Kings and his former Swift Current Broncos side.
“It was definitely weird putting that jersey on for the first time,” he said with a chuckle. “Coming from Swift Current, we had that one game where fans were throwing stuff on the ice in Swift Current. It was definitely weird.”
But there were other things helping Mistelbacher feel at home once he donned that black and gold jersey for the first time. Not least of them were his own memories of Wheat Kings games as a young forward traveling from Steinbach to play tournaments in WestMan.
“Coming here for tournaments as a kid, we’d always watch the Wheat Kings games,” he said. “It was definitely cool for me.”
Things began to come full-circle for Mistelbacher at the end of his career. Suddenly he was the veteran guy giving advice to a younger linemate, as Prabh Bhathal joined he and Jaxon Jacobson on the top line, a line that was the Wheat Kings’ most productive in the playoffs. Asked what one lesson he would want to leave with the team’s younger forwards, the Steinbach native pointed to the need for a strong work ethic.
“Prabh, he just worked hard and his skill was already there,” Mistelbacher said. “If you work hard, your skill will take over.”
Mistelbacher added that when he looked back on his Wheat Kings career, he was going to most remember the time spent on the bus with his teammates.
