Rhett Ravndahl finding way with new club

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This article was published 19/01/2024 (609 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As it turns out, there is a bit of a difference between rural Saskatchewan and downtown Portland, Ore.

New Brandon Wheat Kings defenceman Rhett Ravndahl, a grain farm kid from near Birch Hills, Sask., spent the first year-and-a-half of his Western Hockey League career with the Portland Winterhawks in the city of 650,000.

“The first thing is just the traffic,” the 18-year-old Ravndahl said with a smile. “I will never get over the traffic there. I hated it. The only thing you’ll get stuck behind in Birch Hills is maybe a combine on the road.

“You go to Portland and there’s just traffic everywhere. It’s like ‘Oh God.’ I couldn’t get over the traffic and the roads. I’m not used to driving in downtown Portland, I’m used to driving on gravel roads. It was crazy different.”

The Wheat Kings have a busy weekend ahead at Westoba Place, with the Lethbridge Hurricanes visiting on Saturday at 7 p.m., and the Medicine Hat Tigers skating into the city on Sunday at 4 p.m.

Ravndahl, the youngest of three boys, began to play organized hockey at three because his brothers Austin and Dylan did.

“As I grew up I always had a hockey stick in my hands,” Ravndahl said. “My parents (Chris and Jenny) were like ‘We have two kids in hockey and he’s always at the rink anyway, we might as (well) start some skates on him and let him go skate around out there with his brothers.’

“That’s when I started on their team. I was a bit younger than everyone else, they were about five or six, but I was three and buzzing around.”

The right-shooting Ravndahl, who has always been a defenceman, is the first member of his extended family to play junior hockey.

Birch Hills is located 34 kilometres southeast of Prince Albert, and about 620 kilometres northwest of Brandon.

He didn’t get to a lot of Raiders games — “Obviously we had three kids playing hockey so it was kind of hard to find time” — but they did attend some.

One of his first clear memories of seeing the WHL actually has a local angle.

“It was a Brandon Wheat Kings game,” Ravndahl said. “We were in atom or peewee and our team had a AA tournament in Brandon, and we came out to the Wheat Kings game. I still have some pictures of the game and that’s one of my first memories of the WHL, which is pretty cool.”

With no family connection to major junior, the route to the WHL was a bit of a mystery to him as a youngster. As he grew older, however, he began to realize he might be able to take the game somewhere.

He played U15 AA in nearby Melfort with the North East Wolfpack — there is no U15 AAA designation in Saskatchewan — and apparently made an impression.

On his draft day, April 23, 2020, he found out he had been taken in the fourth round, 83rd overall by Portland in utterly unique fashion.

“I woke up and the first three rounds went past and I was like ‘OK, I’m going to take a quick shower,’” Ravndahl said. “Nothing is going to happen when I’m in the shower. It’s going to be two minutes. I hopped in the shower and just turned it on and my mom started knocking on the door ‘You got drafted to Portland!’ She was screaming and I was like ‘Come on, I just got in the shower.’

“I rinsed off, got out and celebrated with my family. It was a great day.”

Ravndahl joined the U18 AAA Prince Albert Mintos for the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 season, where he was a teammate of former Wheat Kings forward Trae Johnson. He spent the 2021-22 season there as well, contributing four goals, 18 assists and 53 penalty minutes in 41 regular season games.

In the 2022-23 season he cracked the Portland roster, playing 29 games with a goal and three assists. He said it was a massive step up.

“In the WHL, it’s amplified from the last level,” Ravndahl said. “Once you come in, your first year in the league, those first few weeks of training camp and stuff like that, it’s ‘Wow, I’m going to have to compete to even be here. Once you get there and you settle in, you start to get bigger, you start to feel bigger, and you just eventually settle into your boots.

“With size and smarts, you have to be just like that on everything. You have to snap your fingers and be done. Everything has to come in within a 10th of a second.”

He had dressed for 27 games this season when the trade deadline rolled around on Jan. 10.

Much to his surprise, the six-foot-one, 175-pound blue-liner was acquired along with 18-year-old forward Nick Johnson of Calgary, first-round picks in 2025 and 2027 and a fifth-round pick in 2026 in exchange for Wheat Kings captain Nate Danielson.

“I had no idea until about five minutes before the deadline,” Ravndahl said. “I got the call and it was ‘Oh, all right, here we go’ and then it was just a scramble.”

He and Johnson both had their vehicles in Portland, so they made the 2,100-km trip together, arriving in time to see Brandon fall 7-3 to the Swift Current Broncos on Friday evening.

“It was great, I love the facilities here,” Ravndahl said. “And the guys are just amazing. As soon as I walked in, I felt welcome. They were all chatting me up and having a good time. I fit right in right away.”

While he’s in Brandon now, it’s still difficult to leave all that history behind.

“It’s going to be hard,” Ravndahl said. “If we ever see Portland in the playoffs or when we play them again, it’s going to be a weird game. I spent the last two years of my life with those guys. Obviously, there are some great friendships there so it’s going to be weird to play against them.

“My family is happy to see me come here. They can just drive down the road a few hours and come see me, so they’re pretty excited to see I’m close to home.”

While Johnson wasn’t yet cleared to make his Brandon debut last Sunday against the Prince Albert Raiders — he had a lingering lower-body issue that is now healed — Ravndahl was in the lineup for a 6-4 victory.

“What better story to tell than playing against your hometown team,” Ravndahl said. “It was awesome.”

Brandon head coach and general manager Marty Murray said Ravndahl was very good in his debut.

“I liked his game on Sunday against Prince Albert,” Murray said. “I thought he had a physical presence and I thought he made good puck decisions. It was a good first impression on Sunday. I think both those kids are only going to get more comfortable as the days tick by and they get more used to the way we want to play and our teammates.”

Ravndahl is hoping that will include an expanded role as he settles in.

“In Portland there were a lot of older guys,” Ravndahl said. “I was fitting in the middle, but here you can consider me more of an older guy. Looking at the group, there are lots of younger guys. I can see myself fitting in as a leader and a guy who can really help this team in all situations.”

ICINGS: With starting goaltender Carson Bjarnason on the sidelines with a lower-body injury, 15-year-old prospect Dylan McFadyen remains with the team as a backup to Ethan Eskit … Brandon heads out to Alberta next week for a three-in-three road trip which will see them meet the Calgary Hitmen, Red Deer Rebels and Edmonton Oil Kings.

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