WHL NOTEBOOK: Clubs ponder moves as trade deadline looms

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This article was published 02/01/2023 (721 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Western Hockey League trade deadline falls exactly one week from today at 4 p.m., and what the next week will hold is an utter mystery.

With virtually all the top prizes already landing elsewhere, the biggest remaining question is if any of the playoff contenders will become sellers in a red-hot trade market.

It’s a strategy that certainly paid off for the Brandon Wheat Kings in 2018 when they dealt Tanner Kaspick and Kale Clague for a bushel of players and draft picks and then still earned a post-season berth anyway. Nearly since day one this season, there appeared to be four teams that looked to be contenders.

The Winnipeg Ice have been dominant again, tied for the league lead with the Red Deer Rebels and Seattle Thunderbirds with a record of 28-5-0-0.

Winnipeg general manager Matt Cockell has repeatedly displayed a willingness to pay what he needs for top talent, dating back to the acquisition of Foxwarren’s Dawson Barteaux from the Red Deer Rebels for four second-round picks at the 2020 trade deadline.

This season, the Ice have made seven deals since September, acquiring Mason Beaupit, Josh Medernach, Ty Nash, Vladislav Shilo, Graham Sward, Wyatt Wilson and Carson Latimer, plus three players who are no longer with the club, Briley Wood, Steven Arp and Jaren Brinson.

The Rebels were also thought to be a top contender, and when they raced out to a 15-0-0-0 start, it looked like they would also be on the hunt for trade partners. They’ve made some deals, acquiring Mats Lindgren, Tayem Gislason, Dwayne Jean Jr., Marek Schneider and Kyle Kelsey, but whether to go in harder must be keeping owner and GM Brent Sutter up nights.

He has the benefit of overage star Ben King returning from injury in the second half, so that’s like a blockbuster deal in itself.

The Thunderbirds came into the season heralded as the potential Western Conference favourite, and have done a tremendous job fortifying their back end with the acquisition of Luke Prokop from the Edmonton Oil Kings on Oct. 25 and Nolan Allan from the Prince Albert Raiders.

Before the season began, they picked up overage sniper Kyle Crnkovic from the Saskatoon Blades.

They still have lots of picks left if they want to dip their toe into the trade market in the next week.

The other teams in the top echelon in the Eastern Conference are the Moose Jaw Warriors, who have shown some inconsistency this season, and this season’s biggest surprise, the Saskatoon Blades.

The Blades have been pretty quiet since their massive off-season that Crnkovic to Seattle — and brought Connor Roulette back — acquiring Blake Gustafson and sending Braden Schneider’s younger brother Marek to Red Deer.

The Kamloops Blazers are hosting the Memorial Cup in May, and generally teams in similar situations haven’t been afraid to do what it takes to build a top club. It’s a formula that famously blew up on the Kelowna Rockets the last time the WHL had the tournament, which was in 2020 when it was cancelled.

They have acquired Jakub Demek, Ashton Ferster, Kyle Masters and Shea Van Olm, but it’s hard to imagine that they’re done in this season’s arms race.

The Portland Winterhawks seem to be in a constant state of rearming rather than rebuilding, and have played themselves into the discussion as well. They haven’t made any significant acquisitions.

At this point, the biggest sellers have been the Edmonton Oil Kings, who have already sold most of their top assets.

In second place would be the Prince Albert Raiders, who still have overagers Landon Kosior, Evan Herman and Keaton Sorenson, plus goalie Tikhon Chaika and 19-year-old forward Sloan Stanick of Rapid City.

The Victoria Royals and Spokane Chiefs have also dealt a number of veterans and could be active in the next week.

If the deadline is going to heat up significantly, it’s because some of the middle-tier teams decided to become sellers, like the Brandon Wheat Kings did in 2018 when they received a ransom of players and draft picks for Tanner Kaspick and Kale Clague.

If bidding wars begin, it will be awfully tempting for some general managers to follow the path charted by former Brandon GM Grant Armstrong five years ago.

Perhaps the biggest prize available would be Regina Pats sniper Connor Bedard, but both the player and the team have signalled they don’t want a move to be made, much to the consternation of many fans.

While he would fetch a king’s ransom, the Wheat Kings made a similar decision with Nolan Patrick in 2017, and Pats GM John Paddock has repeatedly denied anything is planned.

So where does that leave the Wheat Kings this season?

General manager and head coach Marty Murray isn’t tipping this hand, but it’s hard to believe the club would spend too much right now with their best days seemingly in front of them as their young corps develops.

As a fringe playoff team right now that might be able to play its way into the middle of the pack, it would have to spend an incredible amount to become a legitimate contender.

The club has made five deals since the summer, acquiring Calder Anderson from Moose Jaw, trading Jacob Hoffrogge to Everett, Riley Ginnell to Moose Jaw and Tyson Zimmer to Lethbridge, and making a blockbuster in November that saw them acquire Tony Wilson and Luke Shipley to Victoria for Teydon Trembecky and picks.

That brings us to one final thought.

When former Wheat Kings owner, GM and head coach Kelly McCrimmon led his team to the WHL title in 2016, he did it with trades that brought him an extra second rounder and down a fifth rounder. Just six years later, that seems quaint.

The league changed, likely forever, in 2018 when a quarter of the players in the league were dealt in two months as several teams made runs for the title and Regina hosted the Memorial Cup. The Swift Current Broncos won the title, but are still relying heavily on their general manager and top talent scout Chad Leslie to put the pieces back together and haven’t made the post-season since.

New rules were instituted that prevented the trades of signed, 15-, 16- and 17-year-old prospects and players in the wake of the 2018 fiasco, and while they seem to be loosening on 17-year-olds, it’s changed the way deals are made. It’s not unusual now to see four or five good picks and a player or two being exchanged for a star, because prices seem to have permanently gone up.

Those teams then seemingly hope to recoup some of those picks when they’ve reached their best-before date. The Oil Kings, who won the 2021-22 championship, illustrate the potential and problems in that approach. They received handsome returns for players such as Prokop and Jalen Luypen, but lost out when star forward Dylan Guenther made the jump to the Arizona Coyotes in his 19-year-old season. That cost the Oil Kings a bushel of picks.

All of this seems like an odd way to do business, but it’s the new reality in today’s WHL.

THIS AND THAT

• QUIZ — Brandon goalie Carson Bjarnason has a pair of shutouts this season. Which Wheat Kings goalies have posted more than that in a season since the 1996-97 season?

• SIN BIN — The length of the suspension for Jaxsin Vaughan of the Regina Pats hasn’t yet been determined for a check-to-the-head major and game misconduct in a 4-0 loss to the Wheat Kings last Wednesday. Brandon defenceman Andrei Malyavin remains out with an upper-body injury from the hit.

• NEWS AND NOTES — The Kelowna Rockets have signed 2005-born defenceman Marek Rocak, with the Czech defenceman expected to arrive this week … Prince George Cougars captain Ethan Samson has inked a three-year, entry-level contract with the National Hockey League’s Philadelphia Flyers. The veteran defenceman is from Delta, B.C.

• ALUMNI GLANCE — After spending five seasons in the American Hockey league with the Chicago Wolves and Henderson Silver Knights, Reid Duke has moved to the Slovak league, where he has two goals and three assists in 13 games with Nitra MHC. He spent parts of three seasons in Brandon between 2014 and 2017 after a trade from the Lethbridge Hurricanes, scoring 90 regular season goals as a Wheat King and earning a league title with the club in 2016. His overtime goal in Game 3 of the league final gave the Wheat Kings a 3-0 series lead over the Seattle Thunderbirds.

• BIG WIN — Darlene Kretai took home $78,220 on New Year’s Eve after winning half of the Wheat Kings massive progressive 50-50 raffle. The other half goes to the team’s player development fund, plus the U18 AAA, U17 AAA, and U15 AAA male and female programs

• THE WEEK AHEAD — Brandon hosts the Regina Pats on Wednesday and the Portland Winterhawks on Friday, and visits the Prince Albert Raiders on Saturday. All the games start at 7 p.m.

• ANSWER — Nine Wheat Kings goalies have had three or more shutouts in a season, with some of them doing it multiple times. They are Jiri Patera (four in 2019-20), Logan Thompson (three in 2017-18), Jordan Papirny (six in 2015-16, five in 2014-15), Andrew Hayes (five in 2009-10, three in 2008-09, three in 2007-08), Joe Caligiuri (four in 2007-08), Tyler Plante (4.5 in 2006-07, six in 2004-05), Josh Harding (five in 2003-04), Jamie Hodson (three in 1998-99) and Jomar Cruz (three in 1997-98).