Wheat Kings capture U17 championship

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

After having nothing to show after seven seasons, which included two trips to the final, one to the semis, another pair in the quarterfinals and two more spoiled due to COVID, the Brandon Wheat Kings U17 squad has finally broken through — and in front of their home crowd.

Brandon captured its first Hockey Winnipeg AAA U17 Prep League championship after defeating the visiting Eastman Selects 4-1 to sweep its best-of-five final at J&G Homes Arena on Saturday afternoon.

“In the moment, I was just absolutely pumped,” said starting goaltender Carter Krahn. “I was ecstatic with the boys. We worked so hard all year for this since the start and I knew we were something special, so it was special when we won, winning the first championship in U17.”

The Wheat Kings were certainly not the favourite entering the post-season as the third-seed behind the loaded Winnipeg Bruins and Selects clubs, but they sure peaked at the right time and proved to be the best team when it mattered most.

And Krahn’s play between the pipes had a big say in that.

The five-foot-10, 150-pound netminder racked up eight of his team’s nine wins in the playoffs, making a total of 284 saves to lead the Wheaties to 3-1 series wins over the Wild and Bruins clubs, before finishing off with a sweep against the Selects in the final.

“I feel like I was capable of being one of the better goalies in the league and winning a championship with the boys, but I never thought it would end up like this,” Krahn said reflecting of his season.

And if anyone has doubted the saying ”Everything happens for a reason,” the 15-year-old will be the first to remind you to just trust the process.

Heading into this season the Winnipeg product was coming off his best season yet after collecting a flawless 19-0 record before capturing the U15 AAA title with his hometown Bruins, but was blindsided when he found out his play didn’t even earn himself a spot on one of the U17 or U18 clubs this season.

He wasn’t sure what his next steps were, but luckily, head coach Aaron Rome and the Wheat Kings saw an opportunity and came calling his way.

The rest is history.

“It was definitely like a stab in the back,” said Krahn. “I felt like I probably should have made it, but I guess it was never meant to be and then I came to Brandon and got my payback against Bruins and won the championship.

“Now, I think I’ll be sticking with Brandon, definitely meant to be.”

Krahn, who models his game after Finnish native Juuse Saros of the Nashville Predators, now said his goal is to play on Travis Mealy’s U18 squad next year, but he’s also set to attend some junior camps over the summer as well.

He wants to continue following in the footsteps of his father, Matthew (Matt) Krahn, who played in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League for five seasons — where he won the top goaltending award honours with the OCN Blizzard in 2010 — the Southern Professional Hockey League for two seasons and most recently in the South Eastern Manitoba Hockey League in 2020.

He’s been a big influence in Krahn’s on-ice aspirations.

“Him being a goalie, playing high levels, close to the NHL, it was definitely something I loved and I thought I could make a living out of it, so I think my dad really was a big part of why I’m a goalie and why I am here today.”

From a winner on the Bruins to now a winner with the Wheat Kings, Krahn’s put himself on the map.

But, he’s not the only one.

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!

Ty Aldcroft may have been caught by surprise when first-year bench boss Rome handed him the ultimate leadership role as team captain, yet he showed exactly why he got the call.

Brandon’s second-year forward, who experienced the heartache of last year’s defeat in the final after getting swept by the Bruins, showed up for his teammates with his likeable presence in the room and game-breaking abilities on the ice day in and day out.

“Getting the C was really game changing for me because that kind of made me step up my leadership as well and the whole year I just kind of tried to lead the guys, pump them up, make sure they’re not like down if they make a mistake or whatever and just do my part.”

Aldcroft leading by example is why he was also voted in as captain by his teammates, and it’s also why the Wheaties managed to stay in good spirits heading into the post-season after they dropped three consecutive games to the two teams they were going to need to get past in the post-season in the Selects and Bruins.

Aldcroft and the Wheat Kings simply kept their composure and set their sights on Round 1, and then never looked back.

“Losing kind of just made us push harder towards the goal and we never really gave up,” he said. “I think we just peaked at the right time because we had those tough three games at the end of the season, so that kind of showed us what playoffs was truly about, and made us play to our full capacity.”

“We had a long stretch where we played the Ice Bandits and Interlake and Parkland, which were all lower teams in the standings and then going from those teams to playing Bruins and Eastman is just such a big skill gap, and it’s really hard to adapt from one warm up, but those games were different from the ones in playoffs because we had got back up into our game after playing those hard teams after that long stretch, so that kind of got the skill back going into playoffs, which was good.”

After ranking third in team scoring with 23 goals and 42 points during the regular season, Aldcroft also came in clutch offensively with the biggest goal of his career against Eastman after scoring the overtime marker in Game 1 on the road. That set the tone early that Brandon would indeed be a completely different animal from the team its opponents saw just a month earlier.

He said the moment he hit the back of the net is a feeling he’ll never forget.

“Obviously that was huge,” Aldcroft said. “That was the craziest feeling I’ve ever felt in hockey for sure when I scored that first one. When I shot it, I totally didn’t expect it to go in, I’ll be honest with that, but it went in and I was in shock.

“When I went on the ice at the start of the game I got a good feeling about this game and we worked so hard for it, so I think we deserved to take that game and it was great to steal one away and then coming back and seeing the second one as well was also huge for us in the finals.”

Defenceman Ty Cowan tallied the second overtime winner for the Wheaties in as many games to put his team up by two games leaving Beausejour.

All there was left to do was close the series out at home in Game 3 and that’s exactly what they did thanks to goals from Grayson Rome, Karter Hermenegildo, Denzel Monias and Ashton Shields.

Now, just like his goaltender Krahn, Aldcroft’s goal is to move up to the U18 level next season, where he’s already made himself a familiar face after finding twine in the one game he was called up for.

“When I got the call from Meals to go play with U18, I was like, ‘Whoa, geez, this is crazy,’ and I was probably the most nervous I was ever for a hockey game and then I score, which was crazy,” he said. “That caught me by surprise, and that was good timing because before playoffs, I got to play up with U18 and made me realize that’s the next step, and that we’re going to have to play faster, more physical, quick simpler hockey.”

Aldcroft took that fast paced play back with him to the U17 level and it clearly paid dividends as he and his teammates now enjoy the view from the top of the mountain.

As is Rome, who had a front row seat to watching the victory all unfold.

“Now we’ve had a couple days to reflect on it a little bit, just really proud of the kids,” said Rome. I don’t know if anybody would have fully expected us to do what we did, but we’re really proud of the kids and really happy with how hard they worked all year.

“To be able to watch them kind of accomplish what they set out to do at the start of the year, that as a coach, is the most you can ask for, is being able to share it with them or be a small part of it.”

Rome said while his team’s on-ice growth throughout the season certainly stands out, the most notable is the players’ bonds off the ice, which is what helped them reach their end goal over the weekend.

“We had a really good group of kids. They spend a lot of time together at the rink and then they spend a lot of time together away from the rink.

“I think a big advantage for our team specifically is that a large chunk of our kids go to high school together and are in a smaller centre, so you see they’re friends away from the rink, whereas when you play the city teams or the regional teams, most of those kids don’t go to school together, they don’t live in the same towns or the same area of the city, so we had a tight group of kids.”

» mdelucataronno@brandonsun.com