Nicol soars in underage U18 season

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This article was published 07/05/2025 (336 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Whichever team takes Reid Nicol in the Western Hockey League draft tonight may have trouble getting ahold of their newest prospect.

The young forward, who is widely expected to go in the top handful of picks, headed down to a hockey tournament in Philadelphia last week and returns to Brandon today. In fact, when his name gets called this evening, he’ll likely be in the air flying home.

“We’ll have to buy the wifi,” Nicol said with a chuckle. “We’ve already talked about that.”

The WHL adopted a new format this year, staging the first round tonight, with Thursday’s agenda involving the two rounds of the U.S. Priority draft and then moving to the rest of the main draft.

Nicol, who turned 15 in February but already stands six-foot-one and weighs 186 pounds, has been on the radar of hockey scouts for a while.

In his minor under-15 season with the Wheat Kings, he fired in 36 goals and added 44 assists in just 32 games.

Nicol then joined some fast company when he was allowed to play as underager with the U18 Wheat Kings this season instead of skating in his major U15 campaign. The only two players in Brandon who were given the same treatment were Tanner Kaspick and Jaxon Jacobson.

“I wanted it to be a lot harder going into my draft year,” Nicol said. “I wanted to play up with the older guys because I wanted to see what it would be like. Now I’m eligible for 34 games in the Dub next year so I wanted to see it.

“The only reason I would have stayed to play U15 was if my brother was allowed to age advance, but even if he did I still probably would have gone up to U18. I wanted to play with the older guys.”

But that also brought some added scrutiny, and Nicol admitted he felt the pressure.

“I did, especially at the start of the year,” Nicol said. “I started off slow and I was a little bit scared out there because all the guys were three years older than me and they were bigger and stronger — most of them — and faster. It took me the first couple of games and then I got going and was doing good.”

After scoring twice in his debut and adding a pair of assists in the next game, Nicol sat at 13 points on Nov. 17, which was 16 games into the season, and had been kept off the scoresheet eight times. It only happened six more times the rest of the way as the numbers began to come, highlighted by a four-point performance on Feb. 2 against the Pembina Valley Hawks that featured his first U18 hat trick.

In fact, he had 24 points in the last 16 games, and he finished the year with 35 goals and 23 assists in 48 regular season games.

He was even better in the playoffs, earning five points on March 3 in Game 2 against the Eastman Selects, and posting eight goals and six assists in nine outings.

“I was really happy with my season, especially the last half,” Nicol said. “The first half started off a bit slow but the last half I did really well and we had a great year and I had a great year.”

The Wheat Kings went 40-5-1-2 in the regular season, and in the playoffs they swept the Eastman Selects and the Southwest Cougars before ultimately falling in three games in the best-of-five final to the Winnipeg Wild.

“It was a great group,” Nicol said. “Everybody went well with everyone, everyone had great times together, it was an awesome group. We all worked together well on the ice and in practices. Off the ice, whenever we were doing boxing or yoga, it was always a great time with that group.”

At the tender age of 15, Nicol has already been working for whatever comes next for quite a while.

The left-shooting forward was on the ice by age three or four with his mom Kerri, a figure skating coach. Naturally, that led him to hockey.

“I just loved it,” said Nicol, whose father is Kurt. “I loved playing hockey with all my friends and meeting new people and being with all my friends growing up. That’s what I loved about it, all the tournaments, the spring tournaments, the winter tournaments, everything about it.”

Nicol has a notable hockey player in the family, World Hockey Association veteran Bob Ash, who is his mother’s uncle.

His grandfather Marv Robinson played with the Brandon Wheat Kings when they had a Junior B team, but made the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame for his contributions in that sport.

The hockey lineage continues in the Nicol family with Reid’s younger brother Kale, who is also earning praise at a young age for his hockey prowess at the U13 level.

“He’s a real good player,” said Nicol, who also enjoys golfing and fishing. “I’d say he’s better than I am. He will be for sure. He’s really big, he’s strong, he’s five-(foot)-six, 160 pounds at 13. He is a force on the ice.”

And so is Reid. “I believe I’m a 200-foot player who can play well on both sides of the puck, offence and defence,” Nicol said when asked about his game “I can play the PK — I love to block shots — and I’m smart with the puck and fast. I can probably get better at the physicality. I hit quite a bit when I need to against the walls, but it’s just having my head up and making the plays even quicker.”

He spoke to a few scouts at Manitoba’s under-16 Program of Excellence spring selection camp in April, but they left him alone during the season. Still, he knew they were there watching.

“I just don’t think about it and try and go out there and play my game and do my best for me and the team to win,” Nicol said.

The longtime fan of the Wheat Kings, who lists Brandonites Lynden McCallum, Connor Gutenberg and Ty Lewis as his all-time favourites, said the fact he moved up an age group last season will help him in the future. After all, he’s already experienced what it’s like to skate against older players.

“I got used to how fast it was this year,” Nicol said. “It will be even harder in the Dub but I’ll be more ahead than the other 2010s who didn’t get the age advance.”

On Thursday, he heads to the POE’s top-40 camp at Steinbach’s Southeast Event Centre that ends on Sunday. The POE is held to pick the Manitoba team that will compete in the WHL Cup next fall.

“The pace was a little bit slower, but not by much,” Nicol said. “There wasn’t near as much hitting or physicality, which was not bad. It was still really hard to play against all those guys. They’re good.”

He’ll be seeing a lot of the best players from the camp over the next few seasons as they make the move to major junior.

For Nicol, that next adventure begins tonight.

“I’m really excited,” Nicol said. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. All the teams seem awesome and I would love to go anywhere.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com