Champagne, Wheaties seeking higher standard

Motivation isn’t very hard to come by for Hudson Champagne.

The 16-year-old centre for the Brandon Wheat Kings still has the burning image in his head of him standing on the blue-line as the Winnipeg Wild captain reached for the Jack Forsyth Trophy after he and his club swept the Wheaties during the Manitoba U18 AAA Hockey League final last spring.

For Champagne, coming so close to glory last year makes the memory sting more every day, so he’s determined to live out the other side of that outcome this season.

“Winning a championship is the only thing I’m worried about,” Champagne said on Wednesday. “There’s tons of experience in the room from last year, but I don’t think we realize how good we actually are yet. There’s still lots of room for growth.”

Champagne and the Wheat Kings find themselves in third place at 11-4-1, as they only trail the Winnipeg Thrashers (14-0-0) and Winnipeg Wild (13-2-2). They’re most recently coming off a gruelling stretch where they played four games in a five-day period last week, which saw them finish the set with an even 2-2 split after dropping their last outing to the Southwest Cougars 4-2 on the road.

Champagne believes his team’s record one-third of the way into the season is encouraging but knows they have a higher ceiling to get to — and they don’t need to look very far to see what that standard looks like.

“Last year, obviously going up against the Wild, just every single person worked so hard on that team, and not that we didn’t, but it just kind of showed how good they were,” he said. “They have such an unreal program where they’re the same thing every year, no matter how good of a roster they have. They work the same, they play the same, it’s the same system, and it’s just such a hard team to beat because every night you play them, you know what you’re getting, and it’s just never an easy night.

“No matter how skilled their top guy is, he plays the exact same as their bottom guy, and they just grind you down … You play them in regular seasons, you’re getting the exact same thing in playoffs. It just kind of kills you.”

The Wild have been crowned champions nine times in just 12 seasons with veteran head coach Paul Krueger at the helm. They’ve proved to be an absolutely dominant force year after year in the league and have continued to give Brandon trouble this year as well, outscoring them 13-5 while carrying a 2-0-1 record against them.

It’s a super consistent brand of hockey that requires significant buy-in from each player on the ice, but once it’s achieved, it’s hard to ever go back. With that said, it would also be a disservice to not mention the wagon of a program the Wheat Kings have been riding over the last number of years.

The Wheaties have managed to rack up a first-place finish in the regular season four years in a row now — and that success has also translated well into the postseason, as the club has reached the final three of the last four years and captured a title two seasons ago after beating out the Wild to reach the Telus Cup, where they eventually fell just short to the Magog Cantonniers 4-1 in the final.

During that run, Champagne was called up from the U15 squad and was able to get some once-in-a-lifetime games under his belt at just 14 years old.

“I was lucky enough to be called up to play in nationals, and I even got to play in the final game in Brandon against the Wild, and it was there where I really realized how much better everyone is,” Champagne said of the jump from U15 to U18. “Kids are still maturing in U15, but now it’s just playing against men, and everyone wants to win. It’s so much more competitive, and there’s just more on the table. People are putting their bodies on the line in any game, and it just kind of goes to show that in the last few years of minor hockey, how bad guys really want to win.”

Champagne tallied six goals and 27 points during his first full season with Brandon’s U18 team. Playing under a more compact schedule with 48 games compared to 36 in U15 was an adjustment period, as were the extra practices and morning skates that come with a ramped-up program, but he eventually adapted. And this season, he’s already topped his goal mark just 16 games into the season, as Champagne’s notched seven tucks and 18 points, which ranks fourth highest on his team — only behind Easten Turko (24), Kevin Knee (22), and Reid Nicol (19).

He believes “nothing in the toolbox has changed” from last season, but rather, it’s more a result of the mental side of the game.

“I just think it’s a mental thing. The mind is such a powerful thing, and if you can kind of figure it out and use it to your advantage, it’s a game changer,” he said. “There’s always so much going on in between your two ears, but it was just a mental thing last year where I just couldn’t put it together…even the simple things.”

Tyler Dittmer, the director of player development at the Western Canada Hockey Academy, has really helped Champagne shift his mindset into positive self-talk, and he said it’s gone a long way toward his on-ice improvements.

“It wasn’t like I had a summer where I learned every skill, and that’s what made the difference. It was just a mental thing of like, ‘Hey, you have a bad game. So what?’ Or ‘You make a bad play. So what?’” Champagne said. “Just take accountability because sitting there wishing you could change it isn’t going to do anything except make your next shift not how you want it to be.”

“That’s how it was last year of just constantly being in my own head, worrying about, like, just such little things that didn’t really matter. So, control what you can control and move on from there. If I don’t get the ice time I want, I can’t control that. I can control how hard I work and what I want to try and do on the ice.”

Champagne is hopeful he can get up to 30 goals this season, but his No. 1 priority hasn’t changed. And that’s winning.

“If we finish the season and I don’t score one more goal, but we win, that’s just fine with me,” Champagne said. “Winning’s just all that matters. Nothing else is on my mind, so hopefully we peak in March when we need to and kind of go on from there, hoping to go on to regionals and then hopefully nationals.

“I feel like it’s such a special group this year compared to last year. Obviously, last year, we were pretty talented and went all the way to the finals, but I just feel like we’re so much deeper this year, and everyone on our team can put the puck in the back of the net.”

He and Brandon will get to prove themselves next in a back-to-back set in Winnipeg this weekend against the Bruins (9-1-1), where Champagne knows his club will have to bring a full 60-minute effort.

“They’re a young, fast, skilled team, so we’re going to have to be real precise against them,” he said. “It’s going to show what our identity is. Are we going to bend a bit, but come together as a team, or are we going to break when it gets too hard and turn on eachother. It will be a good test.”

» mdelucataronno@brandonsun.com