Wheat Kings have already made major moves this season

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/01/2015 (3906 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandon Wheat Kings head coach/general manager Kelly McCrimmon hasn’t made this many moves since Brandon’s 2010 Memorial Cup season.

The question is, with the WHL’s trade deadline just a day away, is McCrimmon finally done dealing?

Like most GMs around the league, at the very least he has been busy burning up the phone lines leading up to Saturday’s 1 p.m. deadline.

“Everyone always is discussing different player situations and that type of thing,” said McCrimmon, who already added a pair of impact players this month in deals for 19-year-old winger Morgan Klimchuk and 20-year-old defenceman Reid Gow.

“We had the 20-year-old opening which we were hoping that we would add a player to make our team better, whether it was a forward or a defenceman, so that was something we wanted to do. And adding Morgan Klimchuk as a real high-end forward to our team, a 19-year-old who is going to bring leadership to our group as well. Those were big moves for our team, so I don’t feel any urgency and I don’t see any real deficiency in our current group, so it’s not likely that we would do more.”

To be sure, if the right deal — at the right price — is out there, McCrimmon won’t be afraid to pull the trigger on another trade, especially with the Wheat Kings having lost some muscle when they dealt 17-year-old feisty forward Jesse Gabrielle to the Regina Pats in order to acquire Klimchuk.

While many observers believe Brandon was built for a run at the 2016 WHL title, the rapid development of their young talent and some slick wheeling and dealing by McCrimmon have accelerated the timeline and put the Wheat Kings in contention this season.

Ranked third in the country in the latest Canadian Hockey League top 10, the Wheat Kings have posted the second-best record in the WHL at 29-8-3-1 and are on pace for their most points since the legendary 1978-79 team.

Yes, the powerhouse Kelowna Rockets (32-6-3-0), who have added first-round NHL draft picks Leon Draisaitl up front and Josh Morrissey on the back end, remain a formidable foe down the road. But when you factor in potential injuries and possible playoff upsets, there are no guarantees and no reason to simply hand the Rockets the title.

McCrimmon has made bold moves to position his team for a shot at the league title and, at the very least, garner valuable post-season experience with a deep run in the playoffs.

In all, McCrimmon has made 11 roster moves via the trade route, adding five players (Klimchuk, Gow, forward Reid Duke, defenceman Macoy Erkamps and goaltender Alex Moodie) and trading away six (Gabrielle, left-wingers Brett Kitt and Richard Nejezchleb, centre Ryley Lindgren, and defencemen Kord Pankewicz and Taylor Green).

The Duke and Erkamps blockbuster deal in late September helped set the stage for this season.

The addition of the 18-year-old Duke, a former fifth overall bantam draft pick who has been very good with 11 goals and 34 points in 38 games, gave Brandon another skilled player to add to a forward group that has helped the Wheat Kings lead the league in goals. Meanwhile, the 19-year-old Erkamps has bolstered the blue-line, with 19 points and an impressive +19 plus/minus rating in 37 games for the Wheat Kings.

Adding 19-year-old Alex Moodie (2.59 goals-against average and a .911 save percentage in three starts for Brandon) filled the Wheat Kings’ need for an experienced backup to support No.1 netminder Jordan Papirny.

The deals for Klimchuk and Gow over the past seven days further solidified an already deep lineup. A two-time 30-goal scorer with 220 points in 230 career WHL games, Klimchuk provided the Wheat Kings with another point-a-game player who can play all three forward positions, kill penalties and produce on the power play.

Gow will need a few games to get back into shape — until this week his last game was on Nov. 29 with the University of Manitoba Bisons — but the Killarney native gives Brandon another point producer on the back end, with 113 points in the past two seasons in the WHL.

McCrimmon’s moves have given this team a chance to go deep in the playoffs. With the deadline looming, we’ll know in the next 24 hours if he can come up with something else to help put them over the top.

ICINGS: Former Wheat Kings captain Ryan Pulock, a 20-year-old rookie defenceman with the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, is expected to be out 3-6 weeks with a shoulder injury that will likely keep him out of the AHL all-star game … Brandon blue-liner Ivan Provorov, a 17-year-old rookie from Russia, is now ranked eighth overall by TSN’s Craig Button on his list of prospects for this year’s NHL draft and is also up to 10th in the independent International Scouting Services draft rankings … Former Wheat Kings right-winger Eric Fehr of the Washington Capitals, the 2005 WHL player of the year, took a five-game point streak (six goals and eight points) into last night’s action … Thumbs-up to former Wheat Kings coach Dwayne Gylywoychuk after guiding Hockey Canada’s women’s development team to a gold medal at the Nations Cup, blanking Sweden 4-0 in Tuesday’s final.