By any metric you want to measure, the Wheat Kings of 2024-25 were a drastically improved team from 2023-24. Five more wins and ten more points, 30 more goals for and 31 fewer goals against, and all that with more man games lost to injury. Those man games, of course, include 51 games for their number one centre.
So why does the result of the 2024-25 regular season carry a bittersweet tinge to it? Simple: a missed opportunity.
That was the sting head coach and GM Marty Murray spoke about in our final post-game interview of the regular season after his team’s 4-0 win over the Regina Pats. The East Division title was there for the taking, and they came bitterly, frustratingly close to taking it. In the end, they lost by one measly point. It was maddening.
That single point was the difference between the Wheat Kings having home ice advantage in the first round and not getting any home games in the first round at all due to the Winter Fair. It was also the difference between playing an Edmonton Oil Kings squad the Wheat Kings went 4-0 against in the regular season and a Lethbridge Hurricanes opponent against whom they went 1-3.
You can pinpoint several times this season where the Wheat Kings may have been jobbed out of that single point. The tying goal against the Red Deer Rebels in Red Deer, which no available replay actually showed crossing the line, the offside goal in Prince George that proved to be the game winner, either of those might’ve cost the Wheat Kings at least one point.
There are at least as many instances, however, of the Wheat Kings leaving a point on the table. In both of those games, they had chances to get that point and missed them even after the controversial goals. Later in the season, again in Red Deer, there was a five-minute major on which the Wheat Kings did not score only for them to give up two goals on a later five-minute major against. In November, they had 3-0 and 4-3 leads on Prince Albert (the eventual division champions) and ended up losing in overtime. When coaches talk about points in October and November meaning the same as those in February and March, this is what they mean. Seemingly harmless games can come back to haunt you later on in a big way.
The time has come, however, for the Wheat Kings to either bury that frustration or, more helpfully, channel it. The playoffs have begun.
- Just how tight was the East Division race at the end? Well, with five games to go the Wheat Kings and Blades were tied atop the division standings and the Prince Albert Raiders were one point back. The Wheat Kings went 4-1 in those five games and still didn’t win. The division race this season was a snapshot of the entire Eastern Conference. I referenced last season’s Wheat Kings team, who finished with 33 wins and 73 points; those totals had them in sixth place in 2023-24 but would’ve seen them miss the playoffs this season. Meanwhile, this season’s Wheat Kings would’ve had home ice in the first round last season by virtue of a fourth place finish. At the bottom of the playoff picture, the Swift Current Broncos had 35 wins this season, the most by an 8th seed since 2016-17, when teams still played 72 games and not 68 (in other words, at a time when 35 wins meant a losing record). At the top, both divisions came down to head-to-head matchups in the final game. It’s insane how tight this playoff race was, top to bottom. It should make for an equally insane (and entertaining) playoffs.
- So now, to the matchup: on paper this is the closest matchup of the first round as you’d expect of a 4-5 series. The Hurricanes were the better team by six points in the regular season, but the Wheat Kings had the better goal differential (+42 versus +37). But the head to head in the regular season wasn’t especially close despite featuring close games. The Wheat Kings went 1-3 against the Hurricanes, with their one win coming in a shootout. Now, the Wheat Kings might argue the Hurricanes never saw them at full strength; the one game Roger McQueen played against Lethbridge, Jaxon Jacobson didn’t. The Hurricanes would counter that the Wheat Kings haven’t seen them at their full strength either; the first two games between the two teams, Brayden Yager wasn’t yet a Hurricane, and neither was Caden Price. The final two games, one of which was the Wheat Kings’ lone win, Miguel Marques and Jordan Gustafson didn’t play. Now, the WHL doesn’t publish a weekly report in the playoffs but in this instance they don’t need to. Marques and Gustafson both played on March 21 against the Edmonton Oil Kings, with Marques sitting out the following night against the Medicine Hat Tigers (a shocking 10-1 romp for the Tigers). Side note: if you thought that last game against the Regina Pats didn’t matter for the Wheat Kings, the win guaranteed they would avoid Medicine Hat in round one. So in that sense, yes, the game still mattered a lot.
- Yager, with his NHL-class skill and lengthy playoff resume, will be an x-factor in this series for the Hurricanes (as the Wheat Kings know only too well from last season). So who could fill that role for the Wheat Kings? Roger McQueen seems an obvious choice. A semi-viral between-the-legs goal against the Regina Pats may have been just the thing for his confidence as he progresses in his return from injury, and just the thing the Wheat Kings need going into the playoffs. While it was buried in the disappointment of the result, McQueen clearly found another gear in the playoffs last season, scoring four goals in four games against the eventual champion Moose Jaw Warriors. The Wheat Kings will probably need him to again, and it will be all the tougher against a Lethbridge squad that lacks Moose Jaw’s absurdly productive offense but is far stingier defensively.
- Curiously, neither of these teams is especially loaded with playoff experience. The Hurricanes have played just twelve playoff games over the past three seasons, and the Wheat Kings have played only ten. In fact, the Hurricanes haven’t won a playoff game since 2019. Even some of the players acquired in trade by the teams often don’t have much playoff experience (Anthony Wilson of the Hurricanes will play the very first playoff game of his WHL career in game one). Caden Price, the prized trade deadline acquisition on defense for Lethbridge, has some playoff experience (19 games over three seasons with the Kelowna Rockets) but the players who really tilt this metric in Lethbridge’s favor are the three former Moose Jaw Warriors the Hurricanes acquired: Jackson Unger, Vojtech Port, and Brayden Yager. Between the three of them, they played 60 games in the playoffs last year alone.
- The most experienced man for the Wheat Kings, by far, in the postseason is Marcus Nguyen and you can almost say he was acquired for exactly this. The Wheat Kings got everything they could’ve asked of him in the regular season (he led the team with 36 goals and finished second with 65 points) but his playoff experience was a huge part of why the Wheat Kings sought him out. He’s played 38 playoff games, the most of any Wheat King, and he went all the way to the WHL finals last season with Portland, scoring eight goals and adding 17 points in 18 playoff games, so he wasn’t exactly a passenger on those playoff-bound Portland squads. The Wheat Kings are counting on him for clutch play again.
- Finally, a shoutout to Jaxon Jacobson for adding another Rookie of the Week award to his resume. He came back from injury and got right back to piling up points, adding five in his final three games with the Wheat Kings. On a Wheat Kings’ team that rolls four lines and doesn’t really lean on any one unit, Jacobson still piled up 44 points in 51 games in a season where he played about half his games as a 15-year-old. With more responsibility and more development, you can already foresee him ripping up the WHL in years to come. And speaking of playoff experience, Jacobson, Brady Turko, and Easton Odut went as far into the playoffs as any WHL team last season, going all the way to the TELUS Cup with the U18 AAA Wheat Kings. It’s not WHL playoffs, no, but it’s more players who have some idea of what it takes to go on a deep playoff run, and more players who know a thing or two about winning.
Things are happening quickly now as the Wheat Kings try to reset from the disappointment of missing the division title. Even radio guys have their work cut out for them this time of year. Because the Wheat Kings have to play their first round home playoff games on the road in Virden, I’m off to make sure they’ve got the facilities needed to broadcast the games.
After all, these games, the ones that matter most, are the most fun to call.
