Injury bug continues to bite Wheat Kings

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This article was published 14/02/2025 (295 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If the Brandon Wheat Kings didn’t have bad luck, they would have no luck at all these days.

The injury-riddled team heads to the Moose Jaw Events Centre for a Western Hockey League game against the Warriors tonight, with the two clubs reconvening at Westoba Place on Saturday.

Brandon earned a 7-4 victory over the Swift Current Broncos on Tuesday, and Brandon head coach and general manager Marty Murray said they’ll need similar efforts on the weekend.

“It was a game tailored to a short lineup,” Murray said. “We did a lot of good things, and started out well, which gave us confidence. (Nick) Johnson getting that goal right out of the gate was big. It gave us some confidence, and getting up 3-0 on the road was huge.

“I thought we did an outstanding job of limiting their shots and chances. It was one of those nights we couldn’t afford to have any passengers and I don’t think we did.”

Forward Joby Baumuller is drawing back into the lineup but the club is losing Caleb Hadland to a nagging lower-body injury that has him out day-to-day, his first missed games since he suffered a broken leg as a rookie two years ago.

Brandon is also without defencemen Luke Shipley (upper body, week-to-week) and Merrek Arpin (upper body, week-to-week) plus forwards Roger McQueen (upper body, week-to-week) Jaxon Jacobson (lower body, week-to-week) and Easton Odut (upper body, indefinite).

The other good news is that defensive prospect Cameron Allard is back in Brandon — he practised with the team on Thursday — but the team’s top prospects at forward are unavailable because Chase Surkan has a bad case of the flu and Prabh Bhathal is out for the season with an upper-body injury.

With just 21 skaters on the roster plus a callup and six out, that means the team will have 16 skaters — 10 forwards and six defencemen — two shy of the 18 they’re allowed.

Five of the six defencemen are rookies.

On Tuesday, the line of Nolan Flamand, Marcus Nguyen and Nick Johnson combined for four goals and five assists, fulfilling Murray’s repeated desire this season that the team’s veterans need to lead the way.

“I thought it was very important,” said Nguyen, who had two goals and two assists for a season-high four-point night. “When you have so many guys out — we dealt with it at the start of the season when injuries came into play — so your top guys need to step up and especially your veterans. I thought we did a good job of that.”

Other keys for Brandon on Tuesday were avoiding the penalty box, which has been an issue at times this season, and keeping shifts tight and bright.

“That’s two big points we raised before the game in Swift Current,” Murray said. “You don’t want to get caught out on extended shifts. It can sit with you for a number of shifts if not the entire period. It’s important to get off 40 or 50 seconds in your shift max and get the next guys rolling out. There’s no denying guys are going to get ice time so we have to be aware of that.

“Some of the hardest minutes you play in a hockey game are killing penalties so to avoid that and not be in the box. We had three in the last game and one was in the last minute so probably two through the game, which is the discipline we needed. I think they scored two, but that’s another story.”

Nguyen said it was a message that was delivered loud and clear by the coaching staff to the players.

“We’re low on bodies so the gameplay going into the game was quick shifts,” Nguyen said. “We wanted to roll them over. We don’t have a lot of guys so we don’t want to kill our legs taking a minute-and-a-bit shift that might kill you for the rest of the period. We all knew that.”

Brandon has 19 games left to play in their 68-game season, and just 36 days to play them in before their regular season concludes on March 22.

After this weekend’s games, the Wheat Kings travel to Saskatoon to meet the Blades on Monday at 4 p.m., and then return home for a matchup against the Prince Albert Raiders. After two days off, Brandon hosts the Calgary Hitmen on Friday and head back to Swift Current on Saturday to complete a stretch of six games in nine nights.

The Medicine Hat Tigers did Brandon a favour on Wednesday by beating Prince Albert 3-1. Since the East Division winner is guaranteed one of the top two spots in the Eastern Conference playoffs — and the Central Division’s Tigers are running away with the top spot — much is on the line.

In the conference race, seventh-place Brandon (26-16-4-3, 59 points, 49 games played), is a point back of second-place Prince Albert (28-18-3-1, 60p, 50gp), fifth-place Edmonton Oil Kings (28-19-2-2, 60p, 51gp) and seventh-place Saskatoon (27-17-3-3, 60p, 50gp).

The Wheat Kings are three points ahead of eighth-place Swift Current (27-21-1-1, 56p, 50gp) and 13 points up on the ninth-place Red Deer Rebels (20-27-4-2, 46p, 53gp).

With the teams that tightly packed, every result is magnified in the standings.

“It’s huge,” Nguyen said. “Just seeing how close it is with P.A., losing last night, we know how tight our division and even our conference is. Every game matters, and I think it’s going to come down to the last game of the season.”

While the Wheat Kings lead the defending champion Warriors (11-35-4-2) by 31 points after Moose Jaw sold off a number of its top assets to rebuild for the future, their games have been close.

Brandon has met 11th-place Moose Jaw four times this season, winning twice and falling twice in a shootout.

“We’ve realized that any team can win in this league,” Nguyen said. “With them winning last year, they still have a couple of players on that team and know how to win. We can’t take any team lightly. Every minute of the period is important and going into (tonight), we really want to make a statement.”

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