Wheat King observations and BUFA consternation

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/11/2011 (5413 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s hard to argue with the success of the Brandon Wheat Kings so far this season.

New head coach Cory Clouston has guided the club to a solid 14-6-1-1 record — one point out of first place overall in the WHL — while GM Kelly McCrimmon has bolstered his lineup by adding toughness and talent in acquiring power forward Darian Dziurzynski. The Wheat Kings lead the league in offence (93 goals), boast the best power play in the WHL (scoring at a 32.6 per cent clip) and are slowly improving their penalty killing (75.6 per cent) which has moved up from 20th to 15th in the league.

Considering the Wheat Kings already have their seven-game West Coast road trip out of the way and are finally back to full health after having a number of injuries, the club has to be considered a contender.

With that said, there are a couple of things we would like to see Clouston do:

No.1: Give Corbin Boes a shot to be the No.1 netminder.

The 18-year-old has the fourth-best goals-against average (2.13) and third-best save percentage (.930) in the league. But Clouston seems to want to force recently acquired Brandon Anderson (4.01 GAA, .887 save pct.) into that role, twice playing him in three straight games (three in four days and three in five days), with Anderson struggling in that third game both times before being yanked in favour of Boes.

Unless Boes was nursing some undisclosed ailment during those stretches — perhaps some mysterious upper, lower, middle, inner, outer body injury that the WHL no longer tells its fans about — it’s hard to understand why he hasn’t been given the chance to take the No.1 job and run with it.

No.2: Give Ayrton Nikkel more ice time on the blue-line.

The highly regarded 16-year-old rookie looks like he has all the makings of a future star, but his starts on the blue-line are few and far between. One only has to look at the rapid development of the Wheat Kings’ young blue-chip blue-liners Ryan Pulock and Eric Roy — the top two scoring defencemen in all of the WHL at the age of 17 — to see the benefits of regular ice time.

Yes, it’s difficult to fit Nikkel in with six veteran defencemen on the roster, but the Wheat Kings need to find a way, even if it means sitting out a veteran or moving one up to forward a couple times a month. Regular reps on the back end for Nikkel as a 16-year-old could pay huge dividends for the Wheat Kings in the years to come.

STRIKING OUT: The Brandon University Faculty Association’s refusal to allow Bobcats head coaches to run practices and games — but not teach classes — during their ongoing strike has left BU’s player-athletes feeling frustrated and unappreciated as they represent the school on the national stage each weekend.

Besides the possible breach-of-contract with CIS by not having fully qualified coaches running some of the teams, one decision in particular hasn’t sat well with the players. One of BU’s music professors has in fact been allowed by BUFA to continue to run chorale practices off-campus in preparation for a performance with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra next month.

Simply put, BUFA executive members have actually deemed one performance far more important than another.

Currently, practices and games for two of the four Bobcat teams are being run by fellow students. Why can’t the chorale practices also be run by a fellow music student?

“That I can’t answer at the moment,” said BUFA vice-president Dennis Olson.

For BU’s 54 student-athletes, it’s a frustrating response.

“BUFA was saying that’s a completely different circumstance and we all don’t understand how,” said BU women’s volleyball player Meaghan Robertson. “… To us, our coach is also essential in what we do, too. So that, I think, frustrated a lot of people and I don’t see how that’s any different.”

Neither do we, as the strike enters Day 38 today.

BACK ON TRACK: It’s great to see Minnedosa’s Kyle Parrott back on the national speed skating team.

After taking a year off from competitive skating following the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, the 26-year-old Parrott has returned to the national team full time. The World Cup circuit starts this weekend when Parrott begins the first of three straight overseas events by skating in the men’s 1,000 metres Sunday in Chelyabinsk, Russia.

Parrott is a proud graduate of the Westman Speed Skating Club and a true inspiration for young skaters.