Surkan, Wheaties endure wild ride

If Six Flags is ever looking for inspiration for a new roller coaster, they could do worse than examining the 2025-26 edition of the Brandon Wheat Kings.

The Western Hockey League club (8-9-1-0), which hosts the Medicine Hat Tigers (10-6-2-1) at Assiniboine Credit Union Place tonight at 6 o’clock, has weathered a gut-churning series of incredible ups and disastrous downs through the first quarter of their 68-game season.

Brandon head coach and general manager Marty Murray admits it’s been a lot to deal with this season.

“It’s been frustrating,” Murray said. “We lead the league in goals for per game, and a lot of our goals are almost highlight-reel goals. That part is very exciting. “We feel like we’ve given away a lot of points throughout the year so far. It’s hurting us right now. You look at our record, we’re 8-9-1, and when you look back at some of those games, it’s ‘How did we possibly lose those?’

“It is what it is. You can’t turn back time. We want to learn from our mistakes and move on.”

The Wheat Kings started the season 2-6-1-0, won four straight and have alternated wins and losses since. They’ve beaten three teams ahead of them in the standings and lost to the three behind them.

They’re averaging five goals a game — tops in the league — and allowing 4.72, which is worst in the league.

The power play is first, the penalty killers are 20th. Jaxon Jacobson is second in league scoring, but their poor, beleaguered goaltenders are in the bottom quarter of the league for save percentage.

“It’s tough,” rookie forward Chase Surkan said after practice on Friday. “I think we’re second in the league in goals, and we’re below .500 right now, which shouldn’t be happening. It takes a toll on the room, but all the guys in the room have handled it well. I think it’s only up from here.”

The team defence is especially troubling.

Murray noted the team can be doing a real good job and then make a tiny mistake — for instance, on Tuesday when goalie Jayden Kraus went behind the net, tried to pass the puck to a defenceman, but had it intercepted and sent out front for an easy goal into the empty net by the Red Deer Rebels — and the impact is devastating.

“You can never turn your game off,” Murray said. “If you let up half a second … it’s as little as letting someone get on the offensive side of your body. Those details are so important.

“When things aren’t going great, especially defensively, it seems like any little thing ends up in the back of your net. We have to be that much sharper in our details and body positioning, blocking shots, getting the puck out the first time and not giving teams second and third opportunities, special teams, those are things where everybody has to pull the rope.

“We don’t need to set records for goals against because I think we can score goals.”

Murray said even so, his team has to be able to win 3-1 games too.

It didn’t help that the Wheat Kings lost Surkan for six games as he won a gold medal at the U17 World Challenge with Canada Red in Truro, N.S.

His last game before leaving was on Oct. 26 — he had a hat trick and two assists — and he returned to the lineup 16 days later on Tuesday.

“It was so much fun meeting all the new guys and seeing the guys from the summer camp too, which was pretty cool,” said Surkan, who knew about half his team from Hockey Canada’s U17 summer camp. “We bonded. We were a pretty tight group.”

The five-foot-seven, 167-pound Surkan had a goal and six assists in five games.

In the final, Canada Red beat Canada White 6-3 on Nov. 8, with Surkan assisting Camryn Warren’s empty-net goal that made it 5-3. He was playing against his longtime friend and linemate Maddox Schultz, who is a Regina Pats prospect.

“That was pretty cool,” Surkan said. “We don’t really get to go against each other that much. Getting to go against him was fun because we’ve been on the same team for the past three years.”

Surkan watched parts of Wheat Kings games when he could, although the time difference and his own busy schedule made that difficult. He also had some of his Brandon teammates reach out to see how he was doing.

He was happy to get back to the Wheat City to see his buddies and brought an important bit of wisdom back with him.

“I think it’s the little details they harp on,” Surkan said. “That’s ultimately what led to us winning the gold medal because the two teams are just so similar. Those small details add up to the big prize.”

In 12 games with the Wheat Kings this year, Surkan has 12 goals and seven assists, with 10 of his markers coming on the power play as his teammates set him up for his quick and accurate one-timer.

Murray spent lots of time in the Hockey Canada pipeline during his junior career and has an appreciation for how the opportunity can change a player.

“His confidence going into it would have been at an all-time high, and he obviously played a big role on their team winning the gold medal,” Murray said. “That experience is terrific for him, being in that spotlight. He played a ton — I think he played an average of over 20 minutes a night on that team — and they played five games in a short period of time, so he was tired coming back from that, no question, and probably a little fuzzy going into the game on Remembrance Day.

“We gave him (Thursday) off from practice to recharge his batteries a little bit, and hopefully that will pay dividends going into tomorrow’s game.”

Brandon has met Medicine Hat once this season, beating them 7-4 on Saturday in Alberta. In true Wheat Kings fashion, they pulled away with four goals in the third period despite being outshot 40-27 overall and dominated in the faceoff circle 49-26.

Goaltender Filip Ruzicka might have been their best player, stopping 36 shots, with 13 saves in both the first and third periods.

“They come out hard,” Murray said. “They skate. They don’t necessarily have the firepower they had last year, but they have lines they can throw out one after another that can do damage. Then you throw into the equation two of the top D in the league (Jonas Woo and Bryce Pickford) who can produce offence like a forward, if you’re sloppy and not ready to play, you can find yourself giving up opportunities.

“I thought in the first period, we bent a little bit but didn’t break, and Ruzicka made some big saves, and we got better as the game wore on.”

Medicine Hat played the Regina Pats last night in a game that ended after deadline.

ELSEWHERE

• DISCIPLINE — After calls to the anonymous 1-800 WHL Respect Line, the league has announced disciplinary action against Swift Current Broncos head coach Dean DeSilva and Lethbridge Hurricanes general manager Peter Anholt for breaches of the WHL standards of conduct.

DeSilva was handed a five-game suspension, and the team was fined $10,000 for the way he administered player discipline during a 4-0 road loss to the Prince Albert Raiders on Oct. 24 and during a practice on Oct. 27.

Meanwhile, Anholt can’t return to his duties until Nov. 26, and the team has been fined $10,000 for his use of “intimidating behaviour and language” during a post-game address to players in the dressing room after an 8-6 loss to the Edmonton Oil Kings on Oct. 29.

• DEALS — In trade news, the Regina Pats acquired 19-year-old defenceman Rylan Pearce of Martensville, Sask., from the Everett Silvertips on Friday for a fifth-round pick in 2028 that originally belonged to the Lethbridge Hurricanes.

The Wenatchee Wild made a pair of deals this week, acquiring 19-year-old forward Nolan Caffey of Belmont, Calif., from Everett on Wednesday for an eighth-round pick in 2029, and 17-year-old forward Zane Torre of Ladera Ranch, Calif., from Red Deer on Thursday for a fifth-round pick in 2028.

• NEW LEADER — A record fell on Friday evening as Wenatchee head coach Don Nachbaur was behind the bench for his 1,412th game, moving him past Edmonton Oil Kings and Portland Winterhawks head coach Ken Hodge for most games coached in WHL history.

Hodge last coached in 1992-93, so his record stood for more than 30 years.

Nachbaur, a 66-year-old product of Kitimat, B.C., has also coached with the Seattle Thunderbirds, Spokane Chiefs, and Tri-City Americans, winning the Dunc McCallum Memorial Trophy as WHL coach of the year in 1995, 2008, and 2011. He played in the league with the Billings Bighorns.

» pbergson@brandonsun.com