Wheat Kings to make one pick in CHL import draft

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This article was published 01/07/2022 (1337 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new player will be added to the Brandon Wheat Kings prospect pool today.

The only question is what position he plays and what country he is from.

While most people will be busy planning their Canada Day activities, Wheat Kings director of player personnel Chris Moulton will be gearing up to make the 34th overall pick in the Canadian Hockey League import draft, which gets underway at 10 a.m. CDT.

“The way it’s looking now, we’re going to take the player that is the best fit for us,” Moulton said. “It doesn’t matter if its at forward, on defence, or in goal. We’re going to take the best player available.

“There are holes in our lineup that we need to fill … but we also have more depth in different positions than in others, which is something that we’ll have to consider.”

The club also holds a pick in the second round but only plans to make one choice as Belarusian forward Zakhar Polshakov is slated to return for his sophomore campaign.

The 18-year-old from Minsk, who was picked 29th overall last summer, had 19 points in 55 regular season games for the Wheat Kings and recorded an assist in the team’s opening round playoff loss to the Red Deer Rebels.

While this year’s import draft is a little closer to normal after the last two were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, there is one major wrinkle that clubs have to deal with.

On April 27, the CHL announced that Russian and Belarusian players would be ineligible for selection due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Moulton says the decision by the CHL has some similarities to when teams weren’t able to draft any goaltenders from 2014 to 2018, but this has a much larger effect with the number of franchises that have taken players from both countries in the past.

In 2021, 16 Russian and 11 Belarusian players were selected during the draft, with WHL clubs picking six Belarusians and four Russians.

“Some of those kids that have come over here from both countries have been impact players, so eliminating those countries from the mix makes the pool a little smaller for everyone in the CHL,” Moulton said.

“There’s definitely some good players that might have wanted to come over to North America that won’t now, so we’ll have to wait it out and see what happens going forward. With that said, everyone has the same playing field, so I think it will all even out.”

This also marks the third straight year that the import draft will be held before the NHL draft, which will be held on July 9 and 10 in Montreal.

More often than not, CHL teams will have a better idea of what players could be interested in heading across the pond or which NHL squads would like to see their newly-drafted players develop in North America following that event.

“The NHL teams have been helpful when I’ve talked to them, but they obviously aren’t going to tell me who they are going to draft and they don’t know who they are going to get until the draft itself,” Moulton said.

“That’s another part of what makes this year a little harder for everyone. We’re closer to normal than the last couple of import drafts, but we aren’t quite back to where we were before the pandemic.”

Friday’s draft will mark the second time that the Wheat Kings have had the 34th overall pick.

They selected future NHLer Ladislav Kohn in 1993, but he was dealt to the Swift Current Broncos for forward Chris Low after playing just two games with Brandon.

The Medicine Hat Tigers have the first overall selection for the second time in franchise history.

In 1998, they selected Czech defenceman Vladimir Sicak, who had 44 points in 107 games with the club.

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