The Brandon Wheat Kings have one of the youngest rosters in the WHL. In fact, only three clubs feature a roster with a younger average age. The Wheat Kings are also green—only 12 players have playoff experience and only three have any beyond the team’s mini run last season. Their challengers in the East—Calgary, Swift Current and Medicine Hat—all have older clubs.
And yet, with their 17-5-1-0 start, expectations for Brandon have skyrocketed. Their roster is littered with NHL draft picks and several potential picks in the 2015 draft, including Ivan Provorov, Jesse Gabrielle and Ryan Pilon. Brandon currently sits in first place in the Eastern Conference and despite being shut out Wednesday night at Swift Current are one of the best offensive teams in the WHL.
It’s not too far-fetched to think that Brandon’s talent will continue to outweigh their youth and limited playoff experience. Head coach and general manager Kelly McCrimmon isn’t focusing on their age. “We don’t really talk about that,” he says. “This year’s team is this year’s team. We’re trying to win.”
McCrimmon has done a great job putting this roster together. He made some shrewd moves in picking up Pilon, Reid Duke and defenceman Macoy Erkamps from Lethbridge over the past two seasons and has drafted extremely well. It’s hard to pick one player who is the key for Brandon. They currently have seven players averaging a point per game. That list includes Rihards Bukarts (10g, 18a), Jayce Hawryluk (12g, 15a), Provorov (8g, 16a), Peter Quenneville (5g, 17a), Duke (6g, 13a), Pilon (4g, 15a), and John Quenneville (7g. 10a). That kind of balanced scoring is a big reason for the team’s early season success.
The Wheat Kings got a taste of playoff success last season that may help them this year. They ended the year on a three-game win streak and carried that play into the playoffs. They were the seventh seed and matched up with East Division champion Regina Pats. They swept the Pats in four games, and earned the unenviable task of taking on the Edmonton Oil Kings. The young Wheat Kings didn’t fare as well against the eventual Memorial Cup Champions—losing in five games—but Brandon defenceman Eric Roy says the experience was valuable. “It was good for the guys to see how it is in the playoffs,” he says “We were all a little chewed up that we lost last year. We felt we had a team that could go deep, but this year we came to camp in shape and came to work hard every day.”
While Brandon can score with anyone they have given up a hair over three goals per game. Roy says that is more than they’d like to allow. “We’re a high scoring team and on the defensive side of it we’re trying to keep it to two goals or less,” he says. “That’s a goal we take pride in and try to work towards every night.”
The thought of the Brandon only allowing two goals per game has to scare the rest of the Eastern Conference. The Wheat Kings have already shown that they can win close, low-scoring games as they did Saturday night when they edged Medicine Hat 3–2 in a shootout. They’ve also shown that they can simply outscore you, like they did on Oct. 18 when they beat Portland 10–4.
The other area for improvement is penalty killing. The Wheat Kings are near the bottom of the WHL with a 74.4 percent rate. That problem is mitigated somewhat as they don’t take a ton of penalties but if they can shore up their kill they will be that much more dangerous come playoff time.
Earlier in the year the Wheat Kings took their swing through the B.C. Division and ended up with a 6–1 record. Their one loss on the swing was to Kelowna in a game where they heavily outshot the Rockets in a game that Brandon probably should have won. “It was a great trip,” Roy says. “I felt it was good for us, we’re like a family now, we’re all brothers and we’re all in this together.”
After beating Medicine Hat this past weekend, Brandon then went on to drop a tough game at Swift Current and suddenly have lost two of three after posting a six-game win streak. Is this just a blip in their season or is the rest of the conference slowly catching up?