MID-TERM REPORT: Wheat Kings building after tough start

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This article was published 20/12/2021 (1622 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s been a tale of two seasons for the Brandon Wheat Kings so far.

The Western Hockey League team started the 2021-22 campaign with a spate of injuries, losing a dozen different players in the first six weeks. Naturally, that showed in the standings as Brandon fell to a season-high four games under .500 on Nov. 12 at 6-10-0-0.

Since then, the Wheat Kings have gone 9-3-1-1 and now sit fourth in the Eastern Conference with a record of 15-13-1-1. That stretch includes wins over the Edmonton Oil Kings and Winnipeg Ice without captain Ridly Greig, although the two top teams in the conference were also missing key pieces due to the world junior championship.

Brandon head coach Don MacGillivray said there certainly remain some unknowns.

“I haven’t seen all of our group on the ice together yet,” MacGillivray said. “I think we have some deficiencies and I think we have some areas of strength. As a collective whole, once our guys buy in, then we can be a real good team, a team that is hard to play against.

“We want to a hard to play against, hard-working team every single night.”

 

OVERALL OUTLOOK

Brandon’s record by month tells a big piece of the story.

After a slow start in October (5-7-0-0) and November (4-4-0-1), they began to pick up steam in December (6-2-1-0).

They are 9-6-1-0 at home, earning 19 of a possible 32 points, and outscoring their opponents 59-56. It’s a different story on the road, where they have a record of 6-7-0-1 — 13 of the 28 available points — and have been outscored 56-37. 

It all started with the early injuries, with 12 different players out of the lineup in the first six weeks of the season. MacGillivray can’t remember a season when he didn’t have healthy scratches on opening night, but it happened in October when he started the first game with 10 forwards and the second game with just nine.

Early on, when Brandon couldn’t dress 18 healthy skaters some nights and during the long stretch when they couldn’t put 12 forwards in the lineup, they took some bad losses. 

“It made it very difficult,” MacGillivray said. “It was important not to lose confidence and I think we were a bit fragile at the start.”

MacGillivray breaks the season into 10-game segments, and in the first segment they scored 2.8 goals per game and gave up 5.3 goals against. Their record was 4-6-0-0.

They went 5-5-0-0 in the second 10-game segment.

“We were still trying to find our way,” MacGillivray said. “We hadn’t had 12 forwards for practice even. We managed to stay close enough to the group that we could make some headway.”

In the third 10-game segment, they went 6-2-1-1.

As the season has gone on, and as players have returned to the lineup, the speed the Wheat Kings play at and their ability to jump into transition quickly has improved immensely.

A big part of that, MacGillivray said, is simply because they can finally practise together.

“Until Remembrance Day, we weren’t able to practise the way we normally would,” MacGillivray said. “Right now we have four lines in practice but before we had three lines and you’re limited in what you can do. Some of the drills we did were more individual than team oriented.

“Our team game has gotten a lot better. We do transition the puck better and are playing tighter defensively. We’re doing some things we couldn’t do in the first half because we just didn’t have the bodies to do it and weren’t able to teach it the way we needed to teach it.”

When he compares the first half of the season to the second half, MacGillivray said the biggest change actually comes in his team’s own end, where they’ve tightened up defensively.

“If you just look at our goals-against average in the last 15 games, it’s significant in terms of difference from the first 15,” MacGillivray said. “We’re not giving up as many high-grade scoring chances and when we do, our goaltender has been very good.”

 

FORWARDS

The residual impact of having key contributors out of the lineup, including top-six forward Jake Chiasson, who has missed the entire season after shoulder surgery, continues to haunt Brandon. It certainly shows up in their lines and on the power play.

“We’re going to have figure out our chemistry going forward,” noted MacGillivray, who has used an unusually high number of line combinations early on in an effort to find some trios that work.

Before Greig headed to Canada’s world junior camp, he was playing with Nolan Ritchie and Marcus Kallionkieli on the team’s top line.

It’s worth noting that due to the world junior championship, a suspension and an injury that Greig has played in just 19 games, and he has 14 goals and 14 assists. His hard-hitting, combative style means he has also taken 46 minutes in penalties.

“He’s bigger, stronger faster and more determined,” MacGillivray said. “He’s a driver. He’s a game breaker and we haven’t had him in our lineup for a third of the season.”

Ritchie leads the Wheat Kings in scoring with 36 points in 30 games, and also in goals with 15. MacGillivray noted Ritchie’s plus-minus has made tremendous strides since it got dinged in the early blowout losses. 

“His game has gone to another level,” MacGillivray said. “He’s playing extremely well the last 10 games, to the point where he’s driving a line. He wasn’t driving a line earlier on.”

Kallionkieli, an overage Finnish forward, didn’t make his debut until Oct. 30 after sustaining a lower-body injury in his first practice in Brandon. Since then, he has 15 points in 19 games, with goals in three of his last outings.

“I think Kallionkieli is coming into his own,” MacGillivray said. “He’s starting to dominate in certain situations.”

Belarusian forward Zakhar Polshakov (20gp, 4g, 9a, 13p) is another player making big strides. He didn’t make his debut until Oct. 24 due to visa issues, and promptly scored in his first two games. After missing a week to injury, the 18-year-old has put up 11 points in the last 18 games while proving to be an invaluable penalty killer.

He has also found chemistry recently with Brett Hyland (26gp, 8g, 8a, 16p) and the recently acquired Landon Roberts (26gp, 4g, 4a, 8p), giving Brandon another strong secondary threat offensively.

The team’s four 2004-born first-rounders have provided mixed results.

Rylen Roersma took the early lead in team goal scoring with eight in his first 15 games, but has now weathered a 15-game goalless drought. He’s played all three positions and on all three of the top lines, so he has dealt with a lot of change.

Conversely, Nate Danielson weathered a slower start, which included missing three weeks due to an upper-body injury, and now has seven goals in his last 13 games.

The other two are Tyson Zimmer (29gp, 3g, 8a, 11p) and Ben Thornton (18gp, 4g 1a, 5p), who was acquired from Spokane.

“Those guys had stretches where they played extremely well,” MacGillivray said of the four. “They’ve kind of hit the wall a little bit. It’s an adjustment for those guys because we didn’t have any travel last year.”

One place the Wheat Kings have to be better in is the faceoff circle. In that battle, they are 10-19-1, which means their opponents are gaining control of the puck.

 

DEFENCE 

Brandon’s top two defenders, Chad Nychuk and Vincent Iorio, have proven to be important offensive pieces this season.

Nychuk leads the Wheat Kings with 16 assists, while Iorio isn’t far behind at 14. Nychuk also leads the team with a plus-minus rating of +16.

“In the last 15 games, Nychuk and Iorio have been what we expected,” MacGillivray said. “They’ve been really, really good, and they’re better together.”

Mason Ward, who missed the start of the season with an injury he sustained at Detroit Red Wings camp, has provided a reliable, stay-at-home presence in front of his own net, while filling in as needed on the second power play unit. He leads the team with 51 penalty minutes.

“Mason has started to play really well and do the things we expected him to do,” MacGillivray said. 

Logen Hammett and Jacob Hoffrogge are in their 18-year-old seasons after debuting in the Regina hub last spring, and have been called on to do a lot more this year.

“They’re adjusting from last year’s hub to a regular season where there’s travel and there’s wear and tear on your body,” MacGillivray said. “They’re expected to play against harder matchups.”

Three rookies have played plenty of minutes for the Wheat Kings, with 16-year-old Quinn Mantei and a pair of 17-year-olds, Owen Harris and Zach Turner, getting their fair share of ice time.

“Again it’s chemistry issues and trying to find the right fits,” MacGillivray said. “We’re trying to put guys in good spots. Quinn probably played way, way too far up the food chain early but he handled it and that’s going to be a benefit for us going forward. Harris and Turner have taken on some extra minutes here lately and are showing growth in their game for sure.”

 

GOALTENDING

If all you looked at was the numbers, Brandon’s goaltending tandem didn’t play well in the first month. What the numbers didn’t tell you, however, was how many high quality shots they faced as the Wheat Kings struggled to get healthy.

Overage starter Ethan Kruger has managed to undo most of the early damage to his numbers and now boasts a respectable 3.03 goals-against average and a .909 save percentage. He’s quite simply been his team’s best player on multiple occasions this season.

He’s also missed time twice due to injuries on plays that led to goaltender interference calls being assessed both times.

“Ethan got off to a slow start coming back from Oilers camp and then got hurt twice,” MacGillivray said. “I don’t think he really got onto his game until Remembrance Day or just after. I think he’s really, really played well lately. He’s been a difference maker in a lot of games.”

Carson Bjarnason became Brandon’s first full-time, 16-year-old goalie in three decades after clearly winning the battle in camp, and he was thrown into the fire when Kruger suffered a pair of injuries. Bjarnason appeared in eight games as an overmatched, undermanned Brandon team struggled and his numbers are inflated as a result. Some nights, there wasn’t even a backup dressed.

Since the beginning of November, he’s made just four appearances and now has a 4.69 goals-against average and .866 save percentage

“I felt bad for him,” MacGillivray said. “He got thrown to the wolves with no fault of his own. … Since then he’s been solid. He’s in a role where he’s not going to play much but he has to be ready. That’s tough to do as a young guy but he’s been really good.”

 

SPECIAL TEAMS

The power play and penalty kill have been tracking in different directions for a while.

Brandon’s man advantage sits 18th in the league at 17.1 per cent, and has managed more than a goal in just three games this season while being blanked 13 times. 

The power play has the personnel to be better, but they really didn’t skate together until a few weeks ago and are still struggling to score.

“The power play is an area of concern for me,” MacGillivray said. “It’s an area where we have been getting opportunities and looks. We have good personnel there, but in terms of chemistry, we just haven’t been able to click and get everyone on the same page and understand what we do and make those adjustments in game. 

“That’s a work in progress but I still think it’s going to be good.”

Brandon is 12th in the league with 117 power-play opportunities, and its 20 power-play goals have the team tied for 15th overall with three others.

At least they’re not allowing many goals against on the power play.

Since the Calgary Hitmen scored two shorties against them on Feb. 28, 2020 — a span of 57 games — Brandon has allowed just three shorthanded goals while scoring 14. Brandon has seven shorthanded goals this season, which ties them with the Hitmen and Oil Kings atop the WHL.

The penalty kill has gotten steadily better. After allowing two or more goals in four of its first nine outings while the team was short staffed, Brandon has allowed that only three times since.

In the first 10 games, they were at 70 per cent effectiveness, which improved to 84.9 in the second segment and 80.9 in the last 10 games.

The Wheat Kings have struggled with penalties in recent years, and lead the league by giving their opponents 142 chances. To provide some context, the Kamloops Blazers are the least penalized, with 88 opportunities, albeit in three fewer games. 

“We’re taking too many penalties but our penalty killing is getting better, the chemistry is getting better,” MacGillivray said. “It’s about working as a unit and understanding what the reads are and where to go and with the different look that teams give you, how to adjust. We’re getting there. It’s still not 100 per cent what I want it to be, but we’re getting closer.”

On the weekend, they held the league-leading Winnipeg power play to just one goal on 11 chances.

 

INTANGIBLES

This is an unusual season for a couple of reasons.

First, due to the late start to the year that will see them finish their regular season in April, the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair is no longer an issue in the playoffs. That means if they finish in the bottom four, their first playoff series will be played at home.

And that leads to the second big change.

The WHL went back to a conference playoff, meaning the top eight teams make the post-season, regardless of where they finish in their division.

If current trends hold up, finishing seventh or eighth gives a team an unwanted first-round matchup with Edmonton or Winnipeg.

Brandon holds the fourth spot in the Eastern Conference as the Christmas break begins, eight points back of the third-place Red Deer Rebels and a point up on the Moose Jaw Warriors and Saskatoon Blades.

“If you look at the conference, anybody is capable of beating anybody,” MacGillivray said. “It’s going to be important to be playing well down the stretch and staying healthy going into the playoffs. First of all you have to make the playoffs. If you go on a five-game losing streak, you’re sinking to the bottom of the conference.”

It’s still difficult to get a firm read on just how good the Wheat Kings are. 

Brandon did show some inner resolve after trailing in both games to Winnipeg on the weekend, and mounting comebacks that earned them three points.

They also persevered during a stretch that saw them play eight games in 12 nights, going 5-2-0-1 despite losing the first two games.

But what ultimately matters is what happens between the season resuming on Dec. 27 and ending in Saskatoon on April 2.

“I’m pleased with our group,” MacGillivray said. “I think overall we’ve had more than our share of adversity to start the season. I think everybody recognizes that. When we have our group together, the results are there.

“We’ll see what the second half brings but I hope we can stay healthy and keep moving forward as a group.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @PerryBergson