10 WHL Things, Volume XXVIII

1 – W.N.I.T.D. Schedule – We now know what’s in store through the end of the regular season, as the league office has announced its Wednesday Night In The Dub lineup. There will be at least one matchup from each division that’s free to stream, so that’s a little bit of something for everyone. Also, a nice touch by the WHL to provide the Medicine Hat/Calgary tilt free of charge on Sunday, March 23, the final night of regular season play. I hope this program continues in the post-season! By the way, does anybody remember how cool it was back in the day when Shaw Cable covered the WHL league playoffs? Let’s stay tuned.

2 – Can We Call It? – The Victoria Royals took a giant step this past weekend towards securing a first-place finish in the B.C. Division and what will likely be the number two seed in the western conference playoffs. The Royals swept a doubleheader on home ice with 5-3 and 6-3 wins over the division-rival Prince George Cougars. Victoria, which clinched a post-season berth with the wins, is now nine points ahead of Prince George. The Cougars do have two games in hand and the teams meet for a double dip in Prince George on the final weekend of the regular season. But you know, I’m comfortable calling it. I think Victoria wins the division. The last time the Royals won the B.C. Division title was in 2015-2016, when its 50-16-3-3 record and 106 points also earned the team the Scotty Munro Trophy as regular season champions.

3 – Expansion Wish List – If WHL expansion is truly in the mix, I wonder if this could be a good time for the league to revamp a few other things, too. Firstly, might it be a good time for the WHL to just get “older”? I mean, it wouldn’t bother me at all to see more 19- and 20-year-olds on the rosters, instead of 16- and 17-year-old players. In fact, how about if each team was allowed five or six overage players? I’m pretty confident the quality of play wouldn’t be negatively affected one bit. In fact, I think it would improve the on-ice product. Maybe it’s time to increase the number of import players from two to three? Or, four? If young players these days want to benefit from the luxury of picking and choosing where they prefer to play, what’s wrong with creating a more competitive environment? And, if we can pull all of this together, I wonder if there might emerge even a microscopic chance to return to the days of the National Hockey League’s 19-year-old draft? Yeh, that idea will make some people cranky. But what the heck, nothing wrong with tossing some you-know-what against the wall, just to see what might stick.

4 – Tough Schedule – A very big week ahead for the Brandon Wheat Kings, the league‘s only Manitoba-based team. Battling the Prince Albert Raiders and Saskatoon Blades for top spot in the East Division, a finish that will secure the number two seed in the eastern conference playoffs, the Wheaties will host some heavy hitters this week at Westoba Place. The three-game homestand will be played over four nights and it begins with the WNITD contest against the Edmonton Oil Kings. The Lethbridge Hurricanes and Medicine Hat Tigers will visit the league’s most eastern outpost on Friday and Saturday respectively. Following the homestand, Brandon will hit the road and play four games in six nights in Alberta. That’s a grind, a total of seven straight games against Central Division opponents, before the Wheat Kings host the Blades on March 12.  

5 – Gruesome Graham – Okay, it’s not really that bad, but there is a very insightful article out of Kelowna involving forward Max Graham. One of the Rockets overage players this season, Graham was seriously injured in mid-January and underwent an extensive knee surgery to repair the damage. He shared the details…all the details…with Rockets radio broadcaster, Regan Bartel. Graham, who checks in at 6’3 and 210 pounds is a rare “local boy” who has played his entire WHL career with his hometown Rockets. Selected by the New Jersey Devils in the fifth round, 139^th overall, at the 2024 NHL Draft, Graham is done for the season and finishes his WHL career with 257 games played. The piece discussing his surgery is available for you at RocketFan.ca. It’s really well done, a terrific read!

6 – They’re Just Kids – Boy, do I get tired of hearing this from fans across the league. While I’m comfortable it makes some sense when describing the age group, it’s the flavour-of-the-day manner in which the phrase is tossed around that grinds my gears. It’s typically flouted by the coddlers as rationale for those times when things get tough for the players and teams, or when some feel a player has been on the receiving end of criticism perceived to be unfair. Well, sorry folks, when National Hockey League organizations start depositing hundreds of thousands of dollars into the bank accounts of so many teenagers across the WHL, I’m going to suggest the concept of accountability fairly does go through the roof. Of course, I’m not sure accountability has ever been the strong suit among the adult population that has so aggressively promoted the participation-ribbon approach over the years. But I will submit that there is absolutely no reason to behave like a complete a-hole by belittling WHL players, but let’s lose the “they’re just kids” routine. These youngsters grow up quickly the WHL. They have no choice. It’s been that way for decades. Taking the bad with the good is just a fact of life. That’s just the way it is.

7 – The McKenna Effect – Forward Gavin McKenna of the Medicine Hat Tigers continues to light it up against WHL opponents, rolling along now on a 35-game point scoring streak. The last time he was held off the scoresheet was November 2 in Brandon, when the Wheaties shutout the Tigers, 3-0. Coming off a 97-point rookie season last year as a 16-year-old, McKenna has collected 106 points this season and trails only Andrew Cristall of the Spokane Chiefs in the WHL scoring race. The Tigers have eight games remaining. It’s safe to say McKenna is the face of the league these days, or at least the face of the WHL website. But, are WHL fans coming out in droves to watch the 17-year-old play? It would appear they’re not, certainly not to the extent fans clamoured for a peak at Connor Bedard during his final season in the league. The biggest WHL audience McKenna has played in front of came this past weekend in Edmonton when reported attendance was 8,588. Prior to that it was 7,420 on January 11, again in Edmonton and 7,134 in Spokane on January 24. The biggest crowd to watch McKenna on home ice in Medicine Hat was 5,018 for the Family Day contest against the Lethbridge Hurricanes. In fairness, the population in Medicine Hat is less that 70,000 people.

8 – The Bedard Effect – A few weeks back, I chronicled the attendance numbers around the league during the second half of Connor Bedard’s final season in the Dub. He played in some of the larger venues in Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatoon, where attendance numbers routinely surpassed the 10,000-mark. At home in Regina, where the population is in the 300,000 range, the Pats typically attracted crowds that filled its 6,400-seat venue to watch Bedard. Granted, it was Bedard’s last season in the league and he was destined to become the first overall pick at the 2023 NHL Draft. McKenna, the odds-on favourite to go first overall at the 2026 NHL Draft, has also played in those same large venues and the attendance figures are lower at this point. Of course, the superstar has one more season of junior eligibility remaining before the NHL comes calling, so perhaps attendance will spike next season? Regardless, right here and right now, McKenna is already a “must-see” talent on a high-octane, upper-echelon Medicine Hat team that might even be better next season.

9 – WHL Yukon Showcase – Exciting news released by the league office outlining a pair of pre-season games scheduled for the Takhini Arena in Whitehorse, September 11-14. The Kelowna Rockets and Medicine Hat Tigers will play a pair of games. The city hosted the WHL back in February of 2011, when the Kamloops Blazers and Vancouver Giants travelled up north and played a regular season game. A host of private sector and government entities are collaborating to host the event.

10 – RANDOMS – The WHL may be nudging McKenna to the sidelines this week for a game or two after he was ejected late in the Tigers 5-3 win at Edmonton Sunday night. McKenna gave an Oil Kings’ player a pretty good two-handed slash, which broke his stick. Tigers’ fans have voiced concerns for most of the season about how the Oil Kings treat McKenna, an elite player who has been left to fight his own battles on a few too many occasions this season…What a terrific conclusion to the Four Nations Faceoff for Canadian hockey supporters, with Canada knocking off the USA, 3-2 in overtime. I never did buy into the political nonsense associated with the finale but admittedly, it really helped to fuel the hype-machine. I’ve opined with a few friends of late we have been very fortunate during our lifetime to witness and comprehend the significance of the 1972 Canada/Russia Super Series, the 1987 Canada Cup, the 2002 and 2010 Winter Olympic Games, and now this Canada/USA tilt in 2024. That’s some great best-on-best hockey over 52 years…Has anybody noticed over those past 52 years how Canada has been embroiled in a domestic trade war? We have never had free trade within our borders and inter-provincial trade barriers are a massive, economic-engine-stalling problem that generations of Canadians have accepted meekly for decades. I think it makes the current USA-hate even more embarrassing. When will Canadians stop viewing the world through their glass belly buttons?…When you’re huffing and puffing aloud about your personal protests these days by avoiding your local Home Depot or RONA or Starbucks, do you ever stop to think that the hard-working staff and management on-site are Canadians? They’re your neighbours, fellow members of your community. Your decisions impact them.

(Glen Erickson is a hockey writer based in Medicine Hat, AB)