20 hours of bus travel later, the Brandon Wheat Kings are in Everett for the first game of their U.S. road trip. And they’re not exactly easing into things.
How you look at starting the U.S. portion of the road trip with Everett probably depends on whether you are a glass-half-full or half-empty type; any readers of this blog will know where I stand on that issue. The half-full way of looking at it is: you get Everett, the best team in the Western Conference and maybe in the league, early in the trip when you’re the least banged up instead of at the end when you’re seven games into the stretch.
Of course, the Wheat Kings are a little banged up anyway, perhaps the most so they’ve been this season, which means some players get a chance to step up. More on that in a moment.
As we get set for the showdown with the Silvertips, I’ll do my best to keep you in the loop on the goings on of the Wheat Kings on this road trip. This will be by far the most “in the field” this blog has been all season.
The road has been long but the work continues nonetheless.
- This first game in Everett is not, technically, the start of the road trip. That happened in Lethbridge, after which Marty Murray probably put it best: “You can’t finish this game with a record of any better than 1-0 and we did” was the glass-half-full approach to a game in Lethbridge that, overall, the team wasn’t thrilled with. Finding ways to win when you’re not playing your best hockey is something all teams need to learn to do if they want to take their season anywhere meaningful. Part of finding a way to win is to have your best players come up big at the right moment. In that regard (a multi-goal outing for Luke Mistelbacher, a multi-point outing for Jaxon Jacobson, Joby Baumuller getting his 31st of the season) the Wheat Kings got what they needed out of Lethbridge. It was also the team’s first win this season without Grayson Burzynski, who still has two games left to serve of his three-game suspension incurred immediately prior to the trip in the win over Victoria on January 16.
- Mistelbacher’s first goal against Lethbridge was notable not only because it gave them their first lead of the night, but because it earned Ethan Young his first WHL point. And he did earn it, both on that play and throughout the game. He impressed Pete Gerlinger and I (and may I just add it was a real pleasure to have Pete alongside for a road game this time around) from his very first shift, and he clearly impressed his coaches too, even taking his first point out of the equation. Overall, Young’s debut went about as well as a WHL debut can go, a clear sign of the massive leap forward he’s taken this season. Finding him in the fourth round looks increasingly like a stroke of genius by the Wheat Kings’ scouting staff and hockey operations department.
- Young is not the only piece of youthful reinforcements the Wheat Kings have picked up for this road trip. Carson Ralph and Levi Ellingsen have both joined the team as well. Ralph has already made his WHL debut this season (and, like Young, picked up his first point in a win over Medicine Hat) and has had an excellent season in the AEHL U18 ranks with St. Albert so far, as well as a stellar Circle K Classic Tournament. And while Levi hasn’t made his WHL debut as of this writing, the Wheat Kings aren’t taking him all across the continent just for the pleasure of the scenery. He’s over a point-per-game at NAX in his first ever U18 season, and while he wasn’t able to play any exhibition games for the Black and Gold (USA Hockey has different rules than those of the Western Canadian Development Model) his training camp showed all the signs of an emerging power forward. And because those aforementioned rules have recently changed, Levi is eligible to play games at some point on this trip. What a moment it would be for him to play in Tri-City, the rink where he spent so much time as a younger player watching the Americans.
- For those who’ve never done it, 20 hours worth of bus travel in three days is no joke. You can go a little stir crazy if you don’t have something to do and just about everyone has their own way of making the time pass. For me, it’s usually a book; I spend enough time looking at screens that I want a break from them from time to time, thank you very much. I’ve already polished off the first book I brought with me on this road trip (Stephen King’s The Stand, and boy let me tell you that one hits differently in a post-COVID world) so I’ve had to bring backups. I’ve asked a couple of players what they do to pass the time, and their answer is one I find really refreshing: cards. Luke Mistelbacher tells me they played about six hours worth of cards yesterday (euchre is a team favourite) and I love that answer. The grumpy old man in me thinks of teenagers on a bus doing nothing but staring at their phones the whole time, but the truth is I’m more guilty of that than any of the players. They play cards and generally (and audibly) have a great time the whole way west, and it’s a good reminder of the reason why, when asked what they miss most about junior hockey, so many former players say the bus trips. Because let me tell you, it’s not the simple act of sitting still for eight or more hours that people miss!
- One other great aspect of these trips is seeing new cities, new terrain, and getting what you might call the full Western Hockey League experience. I’m a lifelong prairie boy, and there’s something about mountains and the ocean that makes me grin like a little kid, even though I’ve seen them before. The players are the same way. Some of them are seeing these for the first time, others for the hundredth, but they all love getting to see the mountains and lakes that make up the Pacific Northwest. Cam Allard had a fantastic line on the subject: “It’s a lot different from home, where you can watch your dog run all the way to Swift Current and still call him back for supper.” (Incidentally, I hope Cam gets a chance to do plenty of interviews with NHL teams in his draft year because the force of his personality alone might push him up the draft charts, though his play of late doesn’t need the help). For me it also means finding a new slate of gyms, which I take to the way some people like finding new local coffee shops or book stores. My fellow broadcasters have started to pick up on it too. “Have you got every gym on the road trip all mapped out already?” one of them asked me earlier this month. The answer wasn’t exactly no.
- Tonight’s opponent, the Everett Silvertips, is going to be an incredible test for the Wheat Kings. They don’t lose often, even less often at home, and they’re a fast, hard-working team that has what Marty described to me as excellent buy-in. These guys have the talent, and the work ethic, and last year the Wheat Kings (who were in Everett as an addition to their B.C. trip in a little quirk of scheduling) rose to meet that challenge. It made for an excellent hockey game. I’m hoping for a similarly excellent game tonight. It’s fun to see just how good the Wheat Kings look when someone brings out the best in them. And, speaking as a broadcaster, both the atmosphere and overall broadcast location in Everett are top-notch. Angel of the Winds Arena is among my personal favourites and I know there are quite a few players who feel the same way. Let’s hope they still feel that way in about twelve hours.
The road is a fickle beast. Oddly enough, the Wheat Kings’ record on the road is currently better than their record at home (as a percentage) and last season the Wheat Kings were among the league’s best road teams too. Tonight, they have no choice but to be. Never mind that they’ve been on the bus for 20 hours in the last three days, never mind that this is already the longest road trip of many of the younger players’ careers, and never mind that Everett is, in technical terminology, a wagon. There’s no time for anything less than everyone’s best in this one.
And this is just round one. The road is indeed long. But that does’t mean it’s no fun.
