Teams and players alike are fond of saying that after you get drafted, the real work begins. That’s proven very true over the years, but there’s still some time to celebrate when a player is drafted, and two Wheat Kings have cause for celebration after this weekend.
Goaltender Filip Ruzicka was selected 137th overall by the Minnesota Wild, and defenseman Gio Pantelas was drafted 153rd overall by the Los Angeles Kings, both in the fifth round on the second day of the NHL Entry Draft. This marks the fourth year in a row the Wheat Kings have had a player selected, and third in the last four that multiple Wheat Kings have heard their names called.
“We’re very proud of both of them,” said Wheat Kings head coach and GM Marty Murray. “You’ve got to rewind back to when you’re six or seven years old, everybody’s dream is to be drafted and play in the NHL. It was a big step for those young men yesterday and we as an organization are certainly proud of them.”
It’s been a remarkable run for Ruzicka over the course of less than a calendar year. He began the season a little later than he’d planned, arriving in Brandon in October, and then went right to work, steadily climbing the ranks of goaltenders until, by the time of NHL Central Scouting’s final ranking, he had jumped up to the 4th ranked North American goalie after a superb season.
“When he came over late last year, he was just kind of thrown into the fire,” Murray said. “He hadn’t played in North America so obviously there’s going to be a little bit of a transition time, but I thought he handled that extremely well. He really expedited his development and fit right in. You look at our season last year, he had his fingerprints on our success for sure.”
The 6-foot-7 Czech netminder’s regular season numbers were impressive enough with a 26-14-1 record and a .906 save percentage, but he saved his best work for the playoffs. The rookie played like a seasoned veteran, putting up an astounding .936 save percentage in four games.
“That’s the ultimate benchmark, how you perform in the playoffs when the stakes are high and the chips are on the table,” Murray said. “That’s where you really get evaluated to the fullest extent. Filip passed those tests with flying colours. He was exceptional the entire playoffs. We wish we could’ve gotten more run support for him but he certainly did his job and gave us a chance to win every game.”
Pantelas, meanwhile, had been consistently ranked on Central Scouting’s lists all season and was viewed as a lock to go on draft day. He used his 6-foot-2 frame effectively, and put up 37 points in 68 games this season while seeing minutes in every possible key situation.
“For Gio, it’s not easy to be a top-pair defenseman at 17 years old and he even did that in the latter part of his 16-year-old year,” said Murray. “He’s a guy that proved he can play against top players and he’s a guy with a lot of upside.”
Indeed, with that in mind, it seemed that Pantelas’s selection came late enough that some teams may one day regret passing on him. Their loss is Los Angeles’s gain, and Pantelas has a personality that’s well suited to staying calm even when the draft wasn’t going the way many observers had predicted.
“Gio doesn’t let too much bother him,” Murray said. “I’m sure it was a stressful time, sitting there, watching the draft tick away. But there are so many variables, like what a team needs at that point as far as position, so there are a whole lot of things that come into play. What I told Gio is, you’re drafted now it doesn’t matter what number you were. You just have to continue to impress the organization.”
In fact, Pantelas and Ruzicka may have more in common than both being fifth round picks. Both were projected as higher selections, and probably should have been, and now they get the chance to prove it.
“I’m obviously biased but I think both the teams that drafted our players probably got, in my opinion, steals,” said Murray. “I thought they would go higher but talking to both organizations post-draft, they were excited to get them where they did and they’re ecstatic about it.”
A similar mentality will have to prevail for the Wheat Kings who went undrafted, despite the fact several others probably deserved a selection. Now it’s up to them to prove teams wrong as well.
“I thought we could have had the opportunity to have a few more guys get drafted and it didn’t work out,” Murray said. “You just keep pushing the envelope and get a bit of a chip on your shoulder. With the right approach, guys can really make some noise. In the NHL, teams don’t care if you’re a drafted player or what have you, it’s about ‘What can you do for us?’ and I think that has to be the mentality not only for Filip and Gio but for our entire group.”
