The team that Brandon Wheat Kings fans have seen so far in 2025-26 is going to be the team that carries them down the stretch.
Today’s trade deadline came and went without any move by the Wheat Kings, making them one of four teams to have not made a move since December 1. In fact, the actual day of the trade deadline was relatively quiet compared to the days leading up to it. That’s not, however, for lack of trying going back to the beginning of last month.
“It seems like before Christmas things pick up and even though it’s Christmas break there are a lot of conversations going on over Christmas and a lot of things get done,” said Wheat Kings head coach and GM Marty Murray. “You’re constantly in touch with people and seeing what might be available and seeing if there’s anything that make sense for your hockey club.”
It wasn’t an idle day for the Wheat Kings either, despite no trades actually coming down. Murray said the Wheat Kings spoke to every single one of the other 22 teams in the WHL as the trade winds reached a frenzy in pursuit of a possible addition.
“We had a lot of irons in the fire come up a little short,” he said. “We had a few we had a lot of traction on and sometimes they just don’t happen in the end. You’ve got to look at the big picture too. Certainly we want to make our team better if we could, but at the same time you also have to keep one eye on the future. With the new landscape of the NCAA, you have to be careful how you manage those assets and not just give them away because you don’t know if you’ll get them back.”
That new landscape was undoubtedly a factor in both the trades that were and were not made. That, coupled with the fact Kelowna was hosting the Memorial Cup, made for a trade deadline unlike any other Murray had worked.
“With the Memorial Cup in Kelowna, obviously they’re going to try to get as many players as they can and they had a lot of assets,” he said. “They sold on (Andrew) Cristall and (Caden) Price and company last winter and they were aggressive. That kind of set the tone. You can see around the league, some teams that had really solid bases really stepped up, like Prince Albert and Edmonton.”
So where does that leave the Wheat Kings in the post-deadline Eastern Conference? According to Murray, the expectations for the team haven’t changed and that was true even before the deadline, leaving aside the current three-game losing streak and the incredible 11-1 run through December that preceded it.
“We feel really good about our group and people need to remember too that we made a very significant trade in the summer,” said Murray. “Being in the league for a few years now, I think if you can do those trades in the summer they may be cheaper. If you look at the players we brought in this summer, if we did that today we’d end up paying a lot more. The message to the guys in the room is, we believe in you.”
According to Murray, some of the players the Wheat Kings were asked to give up in potential trades were “glue guys, high character guys, and good leaders that we didn’t want to move”. The team was focussed on adding assets and didn’t really want to be sellers either.
“We went into the trade deadline with an open mind that we want to make our team better,” Murray said. “There’s a price for everything and unfortunately we were in on a few that would’ve helped and we ended up coming in second on a lot of those. It depends how much you’re willing to put out there and commit… We decided that in the big picture, protecting the franchise and the future, we feel good about our team now and we feel good about our prospects and the future.”
Protecting that future was another governing philosophy in making trades. One thing the Wheat Kings have said all along they do not want is a “bottom out” type year.
“Being a competitor, I have a hard time getting into a mode where you’re getting into a stretch where you’re going to win two games out of ten,” he said. “It’s miserable to come to the rink for our staff and our players and our fans. People will be disappointed we didn’t make a big splash, but at the same time we want to be really competitive year in and year out. We don’t want to have one of those years where it’s going to be very trying to get wins. I went through it as a player my first year, we won I think 11 games, and it wasn’t fun coming to the rink. We don’t want to go down that trail, we want to be competitive every year.”
So now the Wheat Kings know the score going forward; the group they have is the group that will need to find the answers for this season and carry them as far as they can. Even in an Eastern Conference where Prince Albert pushed a lot of their chips in and Edmonton added some key pieces, they feel good about their standing in that mix.
“Obviously some teams really beefed up and that’s part of it, you can’t just dip your toe in or go halfway in,” said Murray. “If you decide to go in, you have to go in all the way. It’s not that we don’t believe in our players, I just look at what some of the teams did, it’s a lot but I think with our group we have, the chemistry we have, the character we have, we are going into every game, regardless of whether it’s PA or Edmonton or whoever, we’re going in to win.”
The Wheat Kings open the post trade-deadline schedule with a divisional battle on Saturday night on home ice against the Regina Pats. Puck drop is 6:00 PM.
