U15 AAA champs focus on development

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This article was published 13/11/2024 (507 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Head coach Dave Lewis and his Brandon Wheat Kings may have won the last three U15 AAA Winnipeg Hockey League championships, but he doesn’t define success by victories alone.

Lewis, who is in his fourth year coaching the U15s and works alongside assistant coaches Chris Johnston and Ty Lewis and team manager Amber Woychyshyn, said his goal is to help players who want to pursue the game take the next step.

“I think we’ve been a nice culture of being a very competitive team year after year,” Lewis said. “There is a nice culture of expectation of what we’re supposed to do,” Lewis said. “I always remind the kids that as much as we want to win, for us as coaches it’s our goal to see all those guys who are going on next year to U17 or U18 next year to follow that AAA path if you can.

“We want to see development at the higher levels. If we win or not, if all the guys who are aging out of U15 are all playing AAA hockey, then we’ve done our jobs. If we win championships but the next year if those poor kids the next year can’t make those teams, then we’ve let some people down.”

WINNING WAYS

It’s certainly been an era to remember for the program.

The Wheat Kings run of success began in the 2021-22 season when a talented club led by Cole Temple and Jaxon Jacobson went 31-1-0-0-0 in the regular season and 10-1-0 in the playoffs to earn the city’s first-ever provincial U15 title.

In the 2022-23 campaign, a hard-working but less talented Wheat Kings squad won the highly respected 29-team Graham Tuer U15 Challenge in Regina, went 30-3-0-1-0 in the regular season and defended the provincial title by going 10-2 in the post-season.

Last season, the Wheat Kings finished the 32-game regular season with 29 wins, two losses and one tie — they went 3-1-1 at the Tuer and lost in the semifinals, losing to the eventual champions — and had 10 wins and an overtime loss in the playoffs.

“We’re going to have to be a hard-working, take-time-and-space away group and have a heavy forecheck and be really good defensively in our own zone,” Lewis said of this year’s group. “We’re not going to score a ton of goals. In the past, they could get up four goals and we could still win 6-4 or 7-4. This year, if we give up four, we’re probably going to be in tough, especially against the Winnipeg teams.”

The Wheat Kings currently sit in second in the West Division with a record of 6-3-0, four points back of the Pembina Valley Hawks with three games in hand.

Brandon has a pair of games this weekend in Winnipeg, and returns to J&G Homes Arena on Saturday, Nov. 23 at noon when the Parkland Rangers visit.

BIG CHANGES

The league is down two teams this year after Winnipeg reorganized into three regions that contributed two teams each. In 2022-23, the league had nine Winnipeg clubs, up from four just two years earlier as more teens were given the chance to play but the overall talent dropped.

“With Winnipeg going down to that number of teams, it’s really increased their strength,” Lewis said.

At the prestigious 32-team Tuer Challenge from Oct. 24 to 27, Brandon went 3-2, losing in the quarterfinals. Winnipeg Wild Red ended up winning the event. This year, the league has three divisions of five teams — Central, East and West — instead of one big division like previous seasons.

The details of the playoff format are still being worked out, Lewis said.

Regardless, when you’re a three-time champion, the other 14 teams are doing everything they can to beat you.

“One hundred per cent,” Watt said. “Every team wants to beat us since we’ve won three years in a row. That’s pretty tough to do. We definitely have a big target on our backs. There are a lot of teams chasing us.”

But that hasn’t tempered expectations at all in the dressing room. Woychyshyn said the goal is the same as it was last year.

“I really want to get another banner up on the wall with my name on it and all buddies,” said Woychyshyn, who has seven points in nine games from the blue-line. “I think having won the last couple of years puts added pressure on us to be a good team on and off the ice. Off the ice, we’ve always been a good team that’s never had any problems in the community.

“This year, we’ll need to play hard to get those top spots to reach playoffs and move on from there.”

One key to success is specialty teams, which have been a source of strength throughout the championship run. This year’s group is ticking away at 20.5 per cent efficiency on the power play and a spiffy 90.2 per cent efficiency on the penalty kill.

That may be in part because the team has a television in its dressing room to do a lot of video work, which has paid off.

NEW LOOK

The team has a roster of 19 players, with five in their minor years and 14 in their major years.

Still, there are just three returnees from last year’s championship team, defenceman Mason Woychyshyn, plus forwards Kevin Knee and Brayden Watt.

“They’ve all made huge strides in their games from last year to this year,” Lewis said. “Last year we had a pretty strong team and they were first-year guys and they their roles didn’t have as much opportunity last year but they learned a ton and did a really good job in the offseason getting stronger.

“This year they are definitely leading the team off the ice but also on the ice with their play.”

Lewis doesn’t usually name a captain, so all three, along with defenceman Nash Lenton, have been named alternate captains.

Lewis could have had five returnees, but two players had other plans.

Last year’s leading scorer Reid Nicol, who was entering his major season in U15, instead followed the path of Jacobson and Tanner Kaspick to play with the U18s as an underager. He led the U15s in scoring last season with 36 goals and 44 assists in just 32 games.

The U15s also lost last year’s sixth-leading scorer, Talon Scinocca, who headed to the Okanagan Hockey Academy to play prep hockey.

As a result, a new identity has taken shape.

“I really love how we’re hard working as a team,” Woychyshyn said. “There’s really nobody working by themselves. We’re always moving the puck around and everyone is getting touches and feels in practice and everybody is talking. Compared to last year, we’ve lost some skill and some key guys didn’t come back but I really think that makes us push harder to get that championship.”

Watt agreed.

“We don’t have as much skill as we did last year, we don’t have some of our big names, but we have to play as a team and we have to put a lot of heart and soul into the game to be successful this year,” said Watt, who is second in team scoring with five goals and 18 points in nine regular season games.

A CLOSER LOOK

The team has a pair of first-year AAA netminders, six-foot-one Cooper Dryden, who played U15 AA last season, and five-foot-three Cash Didluck, who played U13 AA.

“They’ve both done a good job this year,” Lewis said. “I have no complaints, our goaltending has been solid throughout. Cooper is a big guy, very athletic, covers a lot of the net, and has a very high ceiling.

“Cash is a little younger, a little smaller but he’s been very competitive in the games we’ve played.”

Their numbers are fairly close, with Dryden sporting a 2.49 goals-against average and .926 save percentage, while Didluck has a 2.62 goals goals-against average and .899 save percentage.

Dryden was a first-team all-star at the Tuer in Regina last month along with the forward Knee, who currently leads the team in scoring with 13 goals and 23 points in nine games.

The Wheat Kings carry seven defencemen, who along with Woychyshyn and Lenton, include Will Preston, Brayden Hamm, Grayson Rome, Vaughn McLeod and Brayden Olsen.

Woychyshyn plays with Hamm, Lenton skates with Olsen, and the other three share time on the third pairing.

Lewis said the jump is especially huge for the two guys making the jump from U13 — Preston and Olson — as they play against bigger and faster players, get hit for the first time while also dealing with advanced forechecks and concepts like layering and rotations.

“There is lots of learning going on, lots of teaching going on,” Lewis said. “There is a huge difference in structure between U13 and U15. This is really their first grasp of learning to play the game tactically.”

Overall, he’s content with the play of the unit.

The forward corps has Knee and Watt, plus Carson Fowler, William Marvin, Austin Hargreaves, Etienne Visser, Cashton Chastellaine, Ethan Chen, Graycen Van Meijl and Sullivan Taylor, with the latter two in their minor seasons.

Chastellaine has essentially been on the shelf with an injury since attending a Steinbach Pistons camp in the fall, briefly returning and then getting hurt again. He’s nearing another return to the lineup.

Knee, Watt and Chen are on the top line, with Visser and Marvin on the second line and the winger rotating from the bottom five.

“Our game the last few years is to have two pretty strong lines and a third line that is really hard to play against, an energy line that forechecks hard and is good defensively,” Lewis said. “That’s usually our younger guys who fill that role a bit more and learn the ropes that year and then come back the next year and take the next step.”

Ten players have scored this season and all but one has a point.

FORECAST

Lewis said the coaching staff is focusing on team play and tactics, which is a work in progress. He uses the analogy that the team is trying to sprint right now when it can’t even walk as the coaches introduce the basic building blocks into its collective game.

“Every level of hockey you go up to, the game gets faster just because the puck moves faster,” Lewis said. “Guys get faster but the puck goes so much faster than they can skate. If we let the puck do the work for us and understand where we’re supposed to go and what our jobs are, if you understand that, you’re one step ahead of the competition.”

He said every season it’s the New Year when the players really grasp the concepts they’ve been taught, so it’s incumbent on the staff to be patient as they adapt.

While this isn’t the super team that began the run in 2021-22, Lewis said it still has the opportunity to win some hockey games. He’s not writing them off at all.

“If we can score on the power play and be good defensively, we have the potential to scare a few teams this year,” Lewis said. “I don’t think anybody underestimates us because we’ve been so successful, but I think the Winnipeg teams think this is the year they can get it done. We’re not the favourites this year for sure, but we’ll see.”

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