With training camp now less than a month away, the Brandon Wheat Kings have made a pair of moves they feel will stabilize the short and long-term future of the team between the pipes.
First, the team traded 20-year-old goaltender Jayden Kraus to the Everett Silvertips. Coming back the other way are a third-round pick in 2029 and a sixth-round pick that same season. They then swung a deal with the Saskatoon Blades, sending a third-rounder in 2029 (they will get to keep whichever of theirs or Everett’s is the better of the two) and an eighth-round pick in 2027 to the Saskatoon Blades for goaltender Ryley Budd.
“I think I speak for everyone in the organization when I say it’s bittersweet to move Jayden,” said Wheat Kings head coach and GM Marty Murray. “He’s an unbelievable kid with a great work ethic and he’s a great teammate. We’re going to miss a lot of the things he brings to the table as a Wheat King. But in saying that, with him being in his 20-year-old year and with (Filip) Ruzicka getting his release and him coming back, Jayden deserves an opportunity to be a number one guy in the league.”
Kraus was acquired from the Victoria Royals last summer and fit in with both the team and the community immediately thanks to an upbeat, outgoing, friendly personality and a genuine enthusiasm for being back on the prairies. As the season wore on, however, Ruzicka began to seize the starter’s reins and the Wheat Kings had an opportunity to do right by Kraus and allow him to finish his career in a starting role.
“Last year, Filip ended up getting the games in the playoffs and establishing himself as the number one guy,” said Murray. “I was so impressed with Jayden’s attitude and his work ethic and his upbeat personality around the room. It would’ve been easy to kind of shut down and go the other way but I can’t say enough good things about Jayden in that regard. He handled it like a pro and those are things you take into consideration. For him to be a number one guy in Everett, I know they’re excited to have him and it seemed like a good fit for Jayden.”
If the Wheat Kings worry that they’ll miss out on Kraus’s off-ice personality, however, they’re getting an excellent replacement in Budd. The 18-year-old Calgary native founded the Be A Budd charitable organization when he was just 13 years old, and by the time he was most of the way through his first season of U18 CSSHL Hockey with Edge Prep, he had raised nearly $40,000 to help kids with physical and cognitive challenges play hockey through the SuperHEROS foundation.
“They’re very similar type personalities,” Murray said. “They’re both really good people, first and foremost. They both have done a lot of work as humanitarians in the Western Hockey League. Jayden did a lot and was involved in our community. We expect Ryley to kind of just pick up that slack and be a key cog in our community as well.”
On the ice, Budd was a second-round pick, 42nd overall, by the Blades in 2023 and has gotten into some game action with them since. Last season, he played 11 games with the Blades, finishing with a 4-4-1 record, a 3.08 GAA, and a .888 save percentage. Those 11 games included a game against the Wheat Kings on January 14, in which he stopped 29 of 31 shots he faced in a 3-1 loss.
“Ryley was a guy that was really high on our list going into the (2023) draft,” said Murray. “He’s somebody our staff thinks really highly of, he’s really athletic, he moves really well. He’s a younger guy as an 08 so I think this really stabilized our goaltending for at least a couple of years. We feel he can be a really strong contributor to our team’s success and we’re looking forward to having him on board.”
With Budd and Ruzicka, the Wheat Kings feel they have a strong tandem going into the season. And Budd is likely to have some key starts at different times of the year because not only is Ruzicka going to camp with the Minnesota Wild, which may take him through the opening act of the WHL season, but there’s also a chance he’s away in December and January as he’ll have a chance to represent Czechia at the World Juniors.
“Training camp with the Wild, you never know how long a guy like Ruzicka is going to stay,” Murray said. “And then he has the opportunity to play in the World Juniors for the Czechs so that could end up being a pretty big chunk of the season where you need somebody to take the reins and we feel comfortable that Ryley can do that. If that opportunity presents itself for Filip, we feel comfortable with Ryley carrying the ball.”
The trades answer one set of questions with the Wheat Kings but also open up another. With the trade of Kraus, Brandon now has a vacancy for a 2006-born player on their roster, and still roughly a month worth of offseason in which to fill it before camp begins.
“We’ll always be looking,” said Murray. “Obviously it’s a changing landscape with 20-year-olds, the situation around the league is different than it’s been in the past, no question about it. A lot of guys have moved on to take other opportunities and this is something we’ll continue to look at. We do have an open spot for a 20, and if something appealing comes our way we’ll certainly look at it.”
