10 WHL Things, Volume XXXI
By Glen Erickson
The week that was provided some somber discussions. There do not appear to be any more secrets regarding the teams that will qualify for the Western Hockey League’s post-season. But playoff position seedings in both conferences will depend on some outcomes this week. It’s always exciting when teams play meaningful games down the stretch. And who’d have thunk it? The scoring race really does look to be up for grabs. Proceed with caution!
1 – East Down and Bound – It would appear the Brandon Wheat Kings have the edge should they end up in a tie for first place with the Saskatoon Blades or Prince Albert Raiders. Each team has three games to play. Assuming the teams finish with the same number of wins overall, Brandon looks like the winner based on securing the most points in games against each of its division rivals. Prince Albert (2-4: 4pts) and Brandon (4-1-1: 9pts) are done with each other for the season, while the Blades (3-4; 6pts) and Brandon (4-1-2: 10pts) meet Wednesday at Westoba Place. Saskatoon and Prince Albert finish the season against each other with a home and home double dip on the weekend, while Brandon and the Regina Pats are on the same program to wind up the campaign. Home ice advantage in the first round is at stake. Talk about coming down to the wire! The last time the Wheat Kings won the East Division title was back in 2015-2016, when the team went on to capture the league championship, too.
2 – Two-Horse Races – In the Central Division, the Medicine Hat Tigers and Calgary Hitmen just keep on winning, though the Hitmen really took one on the chin at home Sunday, an 8-4 loss to the Edmonton Oil Kings. In fact, both the Tigers and Hitmen waltzed into Lethbridge this past weekend and knocked off the Hurricanes, which ended the ‘Canes slim chance to win the division. Lethbridge will be seeded fourth in the eastern conference and will have home ice advantage in the first round. The Hitmen have one game in hand on the Tigers and the teams will meet on the final day of the season in Calgary. Head-to-head this season, the Tigers are 6-0-1 against the Hitmen and Calgary is 1-4-0-2. Over in the B.C. Division, the Victoria Royals have a busy week with four road games. If they can take care of business in Kelowna and Kamloops, the Royals will arrive in Prince George atop the division standings. The Cougars and Royals play a season-ending doubleheader at the CN Centre for all the marbles.
3 – Scoring Sensation – How good is Gavin McKenna? The Tigers 17-year-old forward is rolling along on a 38-game point scoring streak. That includes his current streak of seven straight multiple point games. Maybe that three game suspension really did piss him off? Since returning from the league-imposed hiatus, McKenna has gone off for five goals and 10 assists in his last three outings. Through 54 games, he’s compiled 121 points, five behind league scoring leader Andrew Cristall of the Spokane Chiefs. Cristall has appeared in 55 games. Amid McKenna’s other worldly performance of late, WHL teams know they absolutely cannot sleep on Tigers overage forward, Oasiz Wiesblatt. The pesky veteran has not-so-quietly collected 100 points in 64 games, coming off a 91-point campaign last season. I’m likely in the minority but for my money, Wiesblatt has been the team’s MVP. If there is an MOP award, McKenna is the unanimous winner.
4 – Variety Is The Spice – Timely performances down the stretch are always worthy of note. A nifty game this past weekend for Aiden Oiring of the Prince Albert Raiders in Red Deer against the Rebels. While scoreboard watching, I noted the Wheat Kings had beaten the Moose Jaw Warriors and the Blades defeated the Swift Current Broncos. At the time, the Raiders and Rebels were tied, 3-3 in the third period. Shortly afterward, Oiring tallied in overtime, enabling the Raiders to keep pace with the Blades and Wheaties in the race for first place in the East Division. For Oiring, the game winner completed a hat trick that included a goal on the power play, a shorthanded marker and goal at even strength. Prince Albert has the second-ranked power play in the league, but the shorthanded goal was the first by the Raiders this season. Oiring, a Calgary native, hasn’t missed a regular season game this year or last. The 19-year-old has chipped in with 28 goals and 52 assists – both are career highs.
5 – Road Trips – When speculating on playoff matchups, I always consider the travel. The longest road trip in the Eastern Conference playoffs would emerge if the Brandon Wheat Kings tangle with the Edmonton Oil Kings. It’s about an 11-hour drive through the prairie cities of Yorkton, Saskatoon and Lloydminster. This probably only occurs in the first round if the Wheat Kings win the East Division title and land the second seeding for the post-season. The Oil Kings would have to finish seventh in the conference and right now, that’s a very real possibility. Conversely, a matchup between the Saskatoon Blades and Prince Albert Raiders would result in the shortest drive between two combatants. It’s just shy of 90 minutes on a nicely twinned highway. Prince Albert fans frequently make the trip to Saskatoon, where SaskTel Centre capacity typically ensures good seats are always available. It can be trickier for Saskatoon fans heading to the Art Hauser Centre, home of the banned milk crates. Google it! When Raiders fans sell out the old Comuniplex, it’s as if they just raise the roof!
6 – Skate Blade Cuts – With Carter Bear of the Everett Silvertips on the shelf for the rest of the season due to a lacerated achilles, it brings about the conversation about the severity and frequency of these types of injuries. In terms of frequency, it’s certainly not an epidemic, but the severity cannot be ignored. There is a long list of players in professional hockey – Clint Malarchuk, Richard Zednik, Erik Karlsson, Evander Kane – all of whom suffered significant injuries inflicted by errant skate blades. Former NHLer Adam Johnson was tragically killed in 2023 when his neck was cut by a skate blade during a professional game in England. I recall when Moose Jaw Warriors defenceman Daemon Hunt suffered a cut to his wrist by a skate during a game in Edmonton against the Oil Kings in 2019. For Hunt, who is now in his final year of an entry level contract with the Minnesota Wild, the injury potentially cost him an opportunity to play in a Hockey Canada program. If you can dig it up, Hunt shared some detailed insights about the injury with Guy Flaming of the Pipeline Show in an episode dropped on June 27, 2020. Kelowna Rockets overage forward Michael Cicek suffered a serious laceration to his arm in a game February 21 that ended his season, and he detailed the experience at RocketFan.ca. Discussions throughout the hockey world continue to take place regarding the use of cut-resistant materials to mitigate the seriousness of this kind of injury, but nothing to my knowledge has been mandated. I suppose we’ll just have to continue to hold out breath.
7 – Cumby versus Goldsmith – If you’ve watched major junior hockey for enough years, the incident in Seattle last week that saw Terrell Goldsmith of the Tri City Americans injured and hospitalized as a result of a fight isn’t the first of its kind you have encountered. When he squared off with Thunderbird’s Ashton Cumby, it was just another fight for Goldsmith. Until it wasn’t. It doesn’t happen often, but when a player is knocked unconscious, it’s ugly. What’s worse is if that player is unable to break his fall. That appears to be the case for Goldsmith, who was acquired by the Americans from the Prince Albert Raiders in July. He was selected by the Utah Hockey Club in the fourth round at the 2023 NHL Draft. (Okay, at the time it was the Arizona Coyotes.) At some point, we’ll hear the details from the players, but I’ll go out on a limb and suggest how Goldsmith landed on the ice probably compounded any damage done by Cumby’s right hand.
8 – Age-Old Debate – Whenever an incident this graphic materializes, the debate about fighting in hockey always surfaces. Austin Mattes of PANow compiled some WHL numbers in a piece written following Goldsmith’s injury. He wrote, “…the WHL has seen the number of fights per season drop drastically. According to hockeyfights.com, the 2023/24 season the WHL had 334 fights through about 1,500 games, compared to 2010/11 where they had 859 fights in just under 1,600 games.” For me, when helmets fly off during bouts, I get a little nervous. Most fights these days tend to start of with fists raised, then quickly devolve into a Greco-roman wresting match, with “knowledgeable” fans seemingly awarding the decision to which ever player lands on top of the other when they hit the ice. Most of the time, the players are actually breaking each other’s fall. But when this doesn’t happen, serious injury can occur.
9 – Stevens versus Pilon – Hockey fans of a certain vintage may recall the incident on April 4,1998 when Pittsburgh Penguins forward Kevin Stevens collided with New York Islanders defenceman Richard Pilon. Pilon is a former Prince Albert Raiders rearguard! While the players didn’t fight, it was apparent Stevens was knocked out by the contact and, much like Goldsmith, was unable to break his fall as he hit the ice face first and suffered serious injuries. It’s a National Hockey League post-season game perhaps remembered more for the Islanders forward David Volek scoring the game-seven overtime winner to eliminate the highly favoured Pens from the playoffs. Author Tim Benz spoke with Stevens a couple years ago and wrote a detailed piece in March, 2023 at TribLive about the incident, which you can read right here. It’s a real good read, great insights.
10 – Stats Story – The Everett Silvertips are the 2024-2025 regular season champions. It’s the second time the Silvertips have earned the Scotty Munro trophy, the first came back in 2006-2007. The ‘Tips will be the only team to accumulate at least 100 points this season…Everett and Calgary have been the stingiest teams in the league so far, allowing only 176 goals against. Medicine Hat leads the league with 285 goals scored, three ahead of Spokane…Still no 50-goal scorer in the league this season. Overage forward Shea Van Olm of the Spokane Chiefs leads the way with 48. Andrew Cristall is next with 47…Without the benefit of a trade, the Kelowna Rockets are in the hunt for the first overall pick at the 2025 WHL Draft. Who had that on their bingo card when the season began?
RANDOMS…I’m sure everybody has a story during these covid anniversary days. I remember hopping on a plane in Palm Springs on March 8, 2020 after a week in the desert with a few golfing pals. By the time my flight landed in Calgary, my cell phone was blowing up. I traveled that day with no issues, but when my friends arrived in Calgary from California a week later on March 15, they were in for a totally different program. No going back to work. A two-week quarantine. No visiting your elderly parents. Pure panic was ruling the day. It wasn’t long before the WHL season was shut down, along with just about every sporting activity on the planet. Indeed, it’s difficult to forget all of this. I spoke my mind at the time about how outlandish I felt the pandemic over-reaction was and I haven’t changed my stance since then. I’ve certainly been called a few names over this, but really, I’d settle for “consistent”. God bless the toilet paper hoarders of the world for their insanely bizarre entertainment! Remember the lunacy of “quarantine hotels” and those directional arrows on floors at grocery stores? Plexi-glass at cashier stations? Neighbours being compelled to report neighbours? Group size limits for Christmas dinner? With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight (pun intended), it has been clearly demonstrated the entire adventure was a pretty good deal if one doesn’t mind government waste, but not so good for those who champion access to education for our kids or opportunities for small business success. Alas, I still wonder what the heck we really think we learned about ourselves?
(Glen Erickson is a hockey writer based in Medicine Hat, AB)
