Wheat Kings add 10 players, deal Petr

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This article was published 09/05/2025 (283 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Brandon Wheat Kings got their man to kick off the U.S. Priority draft and then made a pair of trades on Thursday as the Western Hockey League conducted the final rounds of its annual draft.

Brandon head coach and general manager Marty Murray said it’s been a tumultuous couple of days but he was pleased with the result.

“Overall I’m real happy,” Murray said. “There were some real tough decisions made in the last 72 hours but overall I think we got through it and our team sits in a pretty good position.”

Brandon had the first overall pick in the U.S. Priority draft and grabbed forward Levi Ellingsen of Pasco, Wash. In 34 games last season with the STAR Hockey Academy under-15 prep team, the five-foot-11, 158-pound forward had 24 goals, 30 assists and 62 penalty minutes.

With their second pick, they added big defenceman Ayven Hontvet of Warroad, Minn., who at 15 stands six-foot-one and weighs 220 pounds.

Overall in the main draft, Brandon grabbed 10 players, including five forwards, four defenceman and one goalie, with three each from Manitoba and Saskatchewan, two from Alberta, and one each from British Columbia and the U.S.

After taking defenceman Cruz Jim in the first round on Wednesday evening, the Wheat Kings grabbed high-scoring forward Ahmad Fayad with their first pick on Thursday, 38th overall in the second round.

The Edmonton product had 27 goals and 54 assists in 36 games to lead a strong Northern Alberta Xtreme under-15 prep team in scoring. Jim actually billeted with the Fayad family as the friends played together at NAX.

“He’s a great guy,” Jim said on Thursday evening. “I got to play with him this year and actually lived with him this year as well. It’s been awesome being around him. On the ice, he’s a really smart player, super skilled.”

The last time Brandon waited that long to grab their first forward was 2016 when they used their 43rd pick to select future scoring leader Ben McCartney.

The first goalie was taken in the second round, 42nd overall, when the Moose Jaw Warriors selected Dylan Mingo of Peachland, B.C., That led to a run of eight netminders in the next 40 picks and Brandon’s first trade of the day.

They sent overage Czech forward Dominik Petr and a ninth-round pick to the Saskatoon Blades for their fourth-round pick, 83rd overall, and then took goalie Joffrey Chan of Vancouver.

With defenceman Quinn Mantei deciding to play college hockey next season instead of returning for his overage season, Brandon acquired overage forward Luke Mistelbacher of Steinbach and overage defenceman Grayson Burzynski of Winnipeg from the Swift Current Broncos on Wednesday. It coast them their own pick in the first round, 15th overall, plus 15-year-old prospect Alex Letourneau, a second-round pick in 2025 originally belonging to the Saskatoon Blades, third-round picks in 2027 and 2028 and a sixth-round pick in 2028.

That left the Wheat Kings with five overagers, including the two newcomers and forwards Petr, Matteo Michels and Nick Johnson.

“We put feelers out to the league to see who had interest,” Murray said. “I think with Dom being a double whammy with a 20-year-old European, he takes up two spots and you don’t know what the Euro draft is going to bring. We just felt for him and us, it made more sense to move him and have the ability to draft more Euros.”

The deal prevented Brandon from remaining inactive for 69 picks, which would have been the largest gap between selections for the Wheat Kings since the draft started in 1990.

“You want to try to get a goalie and with that gap we had, we needed to do something,” Murray said. “Goalies are the least amount of numbers you have on your board and I think it’s important to get a good goalie, and that was a big reason for the timing of that.”

Brandon took Saskatchewan defenceman Logan Olsen in the fifth round, 107th overall, and after sitting out the sixth round, Brandon picked up the 146th pick overall in the seventh round in a deal with the Everett Silvertips for a pick they had acquired from the Seattle Thunderbirds in return for the Wheat Kings’ seventh-round pick in 2027.

They used the pick to grab Winnipeg forward Mark Munday and then took defenceman Logan Dosenberger seven picks later.

In the eighth round they selected homegrown forward Brayden Watt of the U15 AAA Wheat Kings 176th overall, and after taking Winnipeg defenceman Liam Green in the 10th round — he was a teammate of Munday — they added a pair of forwards, Tristan Will in the 11th round and Taren Anderson in the 12th round.

The Wheat Kings hadn’t made a selection after the 10th round since 2016.

They’ll have to hope some previous success repeats itself. They took forward Brendan Walker in 12th round in 2007 and rugged defenceman Theran Yeo in the 11th round in 2002, both of whom became valuable additions.

The Wheat Kings’ day drew to a close when they passed on their 13th-round pick.

While six of Brandon’s 10 picks were taken after the sixth round, it didn’t worry director of hockey operations Chris Moulton. He led the draft, which included Murray and the team’s scouts either sitting in the Wheat Kings board room or attending via Zoom.

“I’m as excited as I am every year,” Moulton said. “Sure, we didn’t have as many high picks, but where we picked them doesn’t mean that’s where we are. If we pick a player in the sixth round, that doesn’t mean he’s a sixth-round player, it means that’s where we picked him.

“There are a lot of kids we took today that we had rated a lot higher. We don’t care where we pick them, they’re all on the same page now. They’re Wheat King prospects … I’m excited about every one of the guys we took.”

On top of that, Murray said Ellingsen is ready to sign, which means Brandon could finally have one of its own U.S. priority draft players in its lineup for the first time.

“It’s such a different environment,” Murray said of the era that began last November that will allow major junior players to be eligible to play college hockey. “There are going to be situations where it really hurts — losing Quinn Mantei to school, one of the leaders of our hockey club — and that’s the reason why we make that trade yesterday for Burzynski.

“On the flip side of that, maybe we’re going to be able to land some U.S. kids who want to come play in the best junior league in the world but still maintain their NCAA eligibility.”

Overall, Alberta led the way with 75 players taken around the league, followed by British Columbia with 51, Manitoba with a record 39, Saskatchewan with 35, the United States with 24 and Yukon with one.

Manitoba set its previous all-time high in 2023 with 38 players taken in 2023, with 33 taken in 2024. Prior to that, it fluctuated between 26 and 36 from 2011 to 2022.

Of the 227 players taken, there were 120 forwards were taken, 81 defencemen and 26 goalies.

ICINGS: Brandon has made 46 first-round picks since the draft started in 1990, selecting 31 forwards, 14 defencemen and one goalie, Jordan Papirny in 2011. The only year they didn’t have a first-rounder was 2010 after they dealt it to the Moose Jaw Warriors for defenceman Travis Hamonic when they hosted the Memorial Cup.

… The first team to pass was the Regina Pats when they declined to make the 187th pick overall in the ninth round. They had already made seven selections at that point, including Maddox Schultz first overall and Liam Pue with the third overall pick … The final pick of the draft, which was scheduled to be 323rd without all the passes, was defenceman Shea Mooney of Victoria, B.C., who was grabbed by the Penticton Vees … The teams took a 45-minute break between the American and main drafts, with five minutes permitted for each pick in the main draft. Clubs could also call five-minute timeouts.

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