Sniper Jaxon Jacobson rebounds to post stellar U18 AAA season

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This article was published 20/04/2024 (656 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With all Jaxon Jacobson has accomplished this season, it’s easy to forget how much adversity he overcame to get there.

The 15-year-old Brandonite, who is captain of the Manitoba U18 AAA Hockey League’s Brandon Wheat Kings and a prospect of the Western Hockey League’s Wheat Kings, was injured in the final game of the WHL pre-season on Sept. 16.

That cost him more than a month as he healed up. He returned to action to play in the WHL Cup on Oct. 18, and had five points in four games as Manitoba won the gold medal for the first time.

“I was pretty nervous to get back on the ice as quick as I did,” Jacobson recalled. “I had the WHL Cup to get back and that went pretty well. I played through some pain in that but by the time I got back to league games, it was pretty much back to 90, 100 per cent.”

To say Jacobson did OK in his return to league play would be an exercise in understatement.

He made his U18 debut on Oct. 27 with two goals and two assists against the Winnipeg Thrashers, and in 35 games, posted an incredible 37 goals, 69 assists and 106 points. For the math-impaired, that’s a shade more than three points per game.

“I had goals for myself,” Jacobson said. “Lots of those things I try to accomplish every day and every week and month. My biggest goal was just to try and dominate and be the best player on the ice whenever I can be. I think I accomplished that pretty well this year.”

In the playoffs, Jacobson had 12 goals and 11 assists while battling a hip injury, and at Telus Cup west regionals in Winnipeg he had five assists in four games as he played on a bad ankle.

Both injuries have since healed.

Jacobson is quick to credit his linemates Easton Odut and Brady Turko — both of whom are also Wheat Kings prospects — with helping him achieve what he did.

“It makes it a lot easier for me, knowing where each other is on the ice,” Jacobson said. “I definitely wouldn’t have as much success if they weren’t on my line. I guess them being Brandon guys, too, I can’t wait for the next couple of years with them.”

The fifth overall pick in the 2023 WHL draft, Jacobson piled up five points in four preseason games with the WHL’s Wheat Kings and made his WHL regular season debut on Dec. 8 against the Moose Jaw Warriors with two goals in a 5-4 shootout victory.

With a late birthday on Dec. 11, Jacobson was believed to be the youngest player to debut with the Wheat Kings since Ray Brownlee was called up around Christmas time during the 1964-65 season when the team was still playing in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League.

Jacobson made seven WHL appearances during the season, posting four goals and two assists. He said it was a big help when he returned to U18.

“It makes it a lot easier for me, knowing where each other is on the ice. I definitely wouldn’t have as much success if [Brady Turko, Easton Odut] weren’t on my line. I guess them being Brandon guys, too, I can’t wait for the next couple of years with them.”– Jaxon Jacobson

“Just knowing I can compete at that level and keeping my game up there where those guys play at was something that helped me a lot,” he said. “Especially the first couple of games coming back after I played against Moose Jaw, I found out that if I play with a lot of confidence and play like I can at the next level, it really shows on the ice and I get a lot more opportunities.”

But the bulk of his season was spent making history with the U18 Wheat Kings. The Southwest Cougars edged Brandon 3-2 in overtime on Nov. 10, and they didn’t lose in regulation until a meaningless game in the round-robin of the western regionals when they fell 5-3 to the Thunder Bay Kings on April 6.

That gave them a remarkable 55-1-1-0 record.

“We never got too up or too down,” Jacobson said. “That was something we tried to do. Our coaches harped on that for a lot of the year. If we were down in a game or getting worked a little bit, we would stay even, and if we were up a couple of goals, we stayed even, played our game and stuck to the process.”

Of course winning has followed this group around for the last three years.

In U15 AAA in 2021-22, the Wheat Kings went 41-2-0-0 in the regular season and playoffs en route to winning the city’s first provincial title at that level.

With the U18s last season — Jacobson was allowed to play despite having a year of U15 eligibility remaining — they were 39-10-3-0 as they fell in the league semifinals.

With this year’s record, Jacobson’s teams are a remarkable 135-13-4-0 in the last three seasons and have earned two league championships.

“There’s nothing better than winning,” Jacobson said. “You almost hate losing more than you want to win. That’s kind of how it is. You’re doing everything you can to win and building the team up all year every year and make sure you’re always getting better, because every other team is getting better, too. “

He added, “A lot of stuff goes into winning.”

To cap off his incredible season, Jacobson was named MVP in the Manitoba league and the Canadian Elite Hockey League’s player of the year.

“I didn’t have much thought about it,” Jacobson said of the latter award. “It’s a great accomplishment but I have some bigger goals set ahead of me here so I’m focused on that.”

Those goals begin in a couple of days.

Jacobson and the Wheat Kings head to Cape Breton today to compete in the Telus Cup at the Membertou Sports and Wellness Centre. The six-team event starts Monday when they meet Quebec’s Cantonniers de Magog.

“We are the first-ranked team so we have to go in there playing like it and make a statement the first couple of days and show why we’re first ranked and only lost once all year,” Jacobson said. “That’s how we need to go into it. The teams will be really good but I think we can handle it.”

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