U15 AA squad earns more provincial gold

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This article was published 28/03/2022 (1448 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

During a season in which the under-15 AA Brandon Wheat Kings didn’t face much adversity, they suddenly found themselves dealing with a lot of it in the Winnipeg U15 AA Hockey League city final.

After winning the opener against the fifth-ranked Railcats Black 5-3 on March 16, the Wheat Kings fell 3-1 and 4-2 in Games 2 and 3 and found themselves a loss from falling in the best-of-five series.

Head coach Brad Twordik said it was a new position for his club, which had gone 24-2-0 in the regular season and finished in first place.

“In Game 3 we were up 2-0 with six-and-half minutes to go in the third period and on a couple of bad bounces we ended up giving up three goals in 55 seconds and we never tied it up,” Twordik said. “There was a moment there where we weren’t sure what was going to happen in Game 4. You could just tell that everybody was nervous.”

If it seems like you’ve heard an inordinate amount about U15 hockey this winter, you’re probably right. The U15 AAA boys team won the provincial title for the first time in recent memory, and the U15 AAA girls won the rural provincial title and fell in the final against the Winnipeg champion.

There’s a reason for all that success.

“We knew we had a pretty good core group of guys,” Twordik said of his team. “Typically over the years, the 2007 group had been fairly strong, and I think historically the 2007s and 2008 age groups are a very high number for Brandon. With those numbers came a little bit more top-end guys as well, and just more kids in general. That allowed for those kids to develop a little bit more. For whatever reason, those two age groups seem to have a good solid core group of kids.”

The 17-player AA team had a mixture of 2007-born major bantams and 2008-born minor bantams.

Assistant coaches Ryan Shields and Chris Sitko worked with the forwards, and Jordan Campbell ran the defence, with Twordik bouncing back and forth as needed.

The U15 AA Wheat Kings started the season 1-1, went on a 23-game winning streak and then lost their regular season finale on Feb. 13 to finish 24-2. They scored a league-high 136 goals, and allowed just 55, the second fewest in the 14-team league.

“The growth for us really started in our own zone,” Twordik said. “We knew we had lots of guys with lots of talent who were able to score, but we really focused in our practices on being better defensively, and often talked about being better at the blue-lines. That’s where we got to be real dominant, was in those grey areas right on the outside trying to get the puck out of our zone.”

The interesting thing about the 136 goals they scored was how they were distributed.

Ethan Stanley led the way with 24 goals, closely followed by Lucas Newman with 20. But 10 players reached double digits in goals, including leading scorers Mason Twordik (15 goals, 27 assists, 42 points) and Sage Hall-Vermette (13g, 27a, 40p).

“All of our forwards were in double digits and they were all within 10 goals of each other,” Twordik said. “It was just our depth that made us a successful team. We were just a little deeper than other teams.”

He said goals came off the rush, but also on specialty teams and by grinding it out along the boards.

Unlike the AAA level, where a team has to first win the rural provincials and then face the Winnipeg champion to earn the provincial title, the Winnipeg city championship is based entirely on the standings. The Wheat Kings won their first six games in the post-season, sweeping the eighth-place Canadians and the sixth-place Rangers Blue to book their spot in the final.

That’s when the first doubt set in. Everything changed in Game 4 with the first goal.

“The puck ended up underneath the goaltender’s pad and he was clearly across the line,” Twordik said. “We knew it was a goal, but it was a time in the game and the series that if the referee hadn’t called it a goal … I think that was a real turning point for our team because then they understood that maybe not everything bad is going to happen to us right now.

“We got a little bit of luck there. They gave us the goal and then our team never really looked back from there, because at that point the two teams were going back and forth and the Railcats had lots of confidence, which they should have, because they had just beaten us two games in a row.

“If I had to pick a defining moment in that series, it was that first goal.”

The floodgates opened after that, with Brandon earning a 5-0 shutout victory, sending the series to Game 5 at the Selkirk Recreation Complex last Thursday.

Twordik said his team went back to basics, breaking the puck out of its zone, making shorter passes and utilizing their team speed. Their ability to get the puck out of their own end quickly led to a dominant 6-1 victory in the series finale.

“They were very excited,” Twordik said of his team. “The referees came by and said we had to hold the bench until the white (jerseys) cleared out of the zone, and I think that was one of the most difficult things to do because everyone just wants to go over the bench and celebrate with their team.

“It felt a lot longer than it did. It was only a couple of seconds, but any time you get a chance to celebrate with your team, it’s obviously a good thing.”

Next season, the minor bantams will form the core of the U15 AAA team. Twordik noted four defencemen, goaltender Brady Shields and some talented forwards should set that team up for success again next season.

But it’s this year that will be hard to forget for Brandon’s hockey community.

“It’s been a pretty special year for the ’07s just in general,” Twordik said. “Boys, girls, they’ve done extremely well to get to this point. I don’t know if that will ever be matched again. It’s very special when you can do it at all those different categories.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

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