Wheat Kings face tall task to tame Bruins

The Brandon Wheat Kings accomplished one herculean task by getting past the Winnipeg Wild in the semifinals.

Now an even bigger job awaits.

The third-place Wheat Kings (38-7-0-3) and the first-place Winnipeg Bruins (42-3-1-2) open their best-of-five Manitoba U18 AAA Hockey League final series Saturday at Winnipeg’s Southdale Community Centre.

Wheat Kings head coach Travis Mealy said the Bruins are a handful.

“They have a very talented young forward group,” Mealy said. “They play with a lot of speed. Their D does a good job of being mobile and moving pucks into the hands of probably their strongest point. In zone, they’re very creative, young, fast and skilled. We’re up against a little bit of a mountain, I would say.”

Game 2 is at J&G Homes Arena on Monday at 7:30 p.m., and Game 3 is set for the Southdale Community Centre on Wednesday at 7 p.m.

If necessary, Game 4 would be at J&G Homes Arena on Friday at 7:30 p.m., and Game 5 would be at Southdale Community Centre on Sunday at 7 p.m.

The Wheat Kings and Bruins faced off for a pair of games in Winnipeg in mid-November, with the home team winning 4-2 and 5-3. Back in Brandon, the Wheat Kings won 4-3 on Jan. 2 and fell 7-4 on Feb. 24.

In the season series, Winnipeg has outscored Brandon 19-13 with two empty-net goals. On the power play, Brandon is 4-for-11 and Winnipeg is 5-for-12. The Bruins have outshot Brandon all four times.

“They’re a very talented team,” Wheat King captain Jaxson Brick said. “They’re a young team, though, and we have a lot more age on them and experience, if it comes down to that. We play a more physical game and if we want to beat them, we have to play physical on them and wear them down over a couple of games.”

WILD TIME

So far in the playoffs, Brandon topped the Southwest Cougars in four games, and in triple overtime on Monday, Reid Nicol scored for a 4-3 victory that handed the Wheat Kings a 3-1 series win over their long-time playoff rivals, the Wild.

The series-clinching goal came on a power play at the 16:16 mark of the sixth period after the Wild’s Jaxon Dean was flagged for hooking Nicol, who skated in alone against three defenders and was just trying to chip the puck in.

The Everett Silvertips prospect received a pass from blue-liner Easten Turko — a WHL Wheat Kings prospect who has enjoyed an outstanding 16-year-old season — and buried it.

“That’s my spot, shooting from the left flank, and Turk gave me a good pass and I locked down far side, low glove,” Nicol said. “I was going to go for a cele(bration), but I didn’t know if it was tipped by Sham (Hudson Champagne) or their team, so I was just jumping in the corner pretty excited.”

While it was a necessary step to advance, it may have also provided a nice boost to a Wheat Kings franchise that has lost in the playoffs to the Wild several times in the last decade in battles between the league’s most consistently excellent teams.

But Mealy cautioned his team now has to put that triumph behind them.

“We made sure the group isn’t just happy with getting to the (champion)ship,” Mealy said. “It was very important and commendable to beat the Wild, who tend to end our seasons year after year. It’s important we gain confidence from it and realize the job is not done yet.”

The Bruins haven’t had quite as much work to do in the post-season, sweeping the eighth-place Parkland Rangers and the fourth-place Winnipeg Thrashers.

Nicol only skated in two of the four games against the Bruins this season, but got a pretty strong sense of how good they are.

“They’re a really fast team,” Nicol said. “They have a lot of skilled players that can put the puck in the net when you make a mistake.”

TALENTED TEAMS

It will certainly be a battle between a pair of heavyweights.

The league’s first all-star team is comprised entirely of Wheat Kings and Bruins, with Brandon’s Nicol, Turko and goalie Urijah Moosetail joined by Bruins forwards Crewe Schimnowski and Chace Gregg and blue-liner Ryland Moore.

The Bruins also placed defenceman Danny Cross and goalie Zak Matheson on the second all-star team.

The high-powered duo of Schimnowski and Gregg tied for second behind the Wild’s Cody Farrell in the regular season scoring with 88 points.

Brandon may also want to keep an eye on Trevor Toyne, who played just 24 games but had 28 goals and 36 assists during the season, and has nine points in the playoffs.

Mealy said a big must for his team is maintaining their structure. For example, he said the high forward in the offensive zone has to be reading the play and reacting.

“They go north very quickly, to the point where if they catch you sleeping, it’s an odd-man rush every time,” Mealy said. “We have to have a strong F3, we have to trap a little bit and respect their forward group. It’s much the same as the Wild.

“The Wild had a deep forward group. When Cody Farrell has 95 points in the regular season, and doesn’t get a point against us … You have to be aware of those strong players, whether it’s Toyne or Schimnowski, Gregg, (Owen) Murray. We need to know when they’re out on the ice.”

Nicol leads all playoffs scorers with nine goals and 11 assists in eight games, but not surprisingly, 11 of the 12 top scorers come from one of the two teams.

Special teams could be a deciding factor in the series if either team is undisciplined. While the Pembina Valley Hawks led the league with a 32.0 per cent conversion rate on the power play, the Wheat Kings were second at 31.3 per cent and the Bruins were third at 29.6 per cent.

In the playoffs, Winnipeg is first at 50.0 per cent and Brandon is second at 40.0 per cent.

“Both teams were carrying around 30 per cent through 48 games,” Mealy said. “I don’t think there is a game plan in place for either team to continue to go to the box. We need to be disciplined, but so do they. The other thing is, our goal is to wear them down and play five-on-five hockey. You can’t wear them down when we’re killing penalties.”

The battle between the pipes will also be interesting.

Brandon’s Moosetail has a .930 save percentage, going 5-1-1-0 in the playoffs, and Cooper Dryden isn’t far behind at .912 with a record of 1-0-0-0. Meanwhile, Logan German is 5-0-0-0 with a gaudy .963 save percentage and Zak Matheson is 1-0-0-0 in his only appearance.

“German is a really strong 2010 goalie,” Nicol said. “He moves well, he sees the puck well, he reads the dekes. He’s super smart. Matheson is good head-on, but if you can get him moving, you can beat him.

EXPERIENCE EDGE

The Bruins have a familiar face on the bench in assistant coach Caiden Daley, who spent five seasons in the Western Hockey League after being drafted by the Wheat Kings. Their head coach is Larry Woo, a former WHLer who is the father of former Moose Jaw Warriors and Calgary Hitmen defenceman Jett and current Medicine Hat Tigers blue-liner Jonas.

The Bruins, who entered the league in the 2017-18 season to give the city of 850,000 three U18 teams, have one appearance in the final, losing to the Wild in 2022-23. They have never missed the playoffs, but had their season end in the semifinals twice and in the quarterfinals four times.

Brandon certainly has an edge in playoff experience after going to the final against the Wild the last two years, winning in 2024 and losing in 2025.

“Being an older guy, I’ve been at both ends of it,” Brick said. “I’ve won and I’ve lost. First year we got the win, last year we didn’t. Seeing that and knowing how it feels, I’m sharing that with the boys and letting them know. Everybody in the room wants to win. It’s almost like I don’t have to do that because everyone is buying in and ready. It’s awesome.”

He certainly won’t have to convince Nicol.

“It’s what everyone wants in the dressing room and it’s what I want for sure,” Nicol said. “I would love to see it happen.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com