After 12 Western Hockey League teams scored more goals than the Brandon Wheat Kings last season, they have to be thinking this might finally be the year their depth and skill break through.
Brandon head coach and general manager Marty Murray may have a nice problem on his hands as he tries to figure where everybody slots into the lineup.
“I look at our 12 forwards, and I think it’s a real deep group,” Murray said. “I’m hoping we can have those 40-, 50-goal scorers, but I really think by committee we should have a lot of guys north of 20 goals in my opinion. I think with the talent we have, we should have guys contributing up and down the lineup.
“It’s going to be hard to place one through four on our lines because I really think any line on a given night can impact the game.”
Last season, graduated forward Brett Hyland led the team with 59 points, the second-lowest total for the franchise’s points leader in Brandon’s 57-year history in the WHL.
The player who will have the most eyes on him this season will be Saskatoon product Roger McQueen, who is finally eligible for the National Hockey League draft and is being touted as a top-10 pick.
The lanky forward had 21 goals and 30 assists in 53 games a year ago, and after losing the final month of the season to an upper-body injury, led the Wheat Kings with four goals and an assist as Brandon was swept by the eventual league champion Moose Jaw Warriors.
“Obviously Roger McQueen being healthy is going to be real important for us,” Murray said. “I think he is ready to establish himself as a first-line centre in the league. He had a real solid year last year. Unfortunately, he got sidelined a little bit but we also got a taste of him going head-to-head against some of the best players in junior hockey in Moose Jaw last year in the first round of the playoffs.
“With him not even skating for a month, he came out and looked as good as anybody in that series. I’m real optimistic about Roger. I think he’s ready to take it to that next level.”
Another candidate to make a massive jump could be Dominik Petr. The big Czech forward had 17 goals and 28 assists in 67 games in his first season in North America, which is often a year of transition for import players.
“We need him to,” Murray said. “We’re calling him a second-line centre behind McQueen right now. That would be a pretty good one-two punch. Dom was a guy who started really strong, dipped in the middle and then finished pretty strong. As a player and learning more about Europeans and trajectories in the past, we anticipate him as a second-year guy knowing the league and knowing what it takes, to make some strides this year.”
The returning points leader is fifth-year veteran Rylen Roersma, who had 58 in 64 games. The team’s other candidates to land overage spots — Brandon veteran Nolan Flamand had 44 points in 67 games and Marcus Nguyen had 56 points in 66 games with the Portland Winterhawks — could also be extremely impactful.
There may also be an unusual amount of help from the team’s rookies. Jaxon Jacobson had six points in seven games as a 15-year-old callup, and his under-18 AAA linemate Brady Turko had three points in seven WHL games. Both saw time on the power play during their callups as they enjoyed sensational seasons at the under-18 AAA level.
Other candidates for more offence include 18-year-olds Caleb Hadland (68gp, 12g, 27a, 39p) and Carter Klippenstein (66gp, 10g, 11a, 21p), 19-year-olds Matteo Michels (67gp, 17g, 14a, 31p) and Nick Johnson (45gp, 7g, 19a, 26p) and second-year player Joby Baumuller (52gp, 5g, 6a, 11p).
Opposing coaches often said last year that Brandon had a dangerous group of forwards off the rush, which is due in part to the team’s ability to move the puck up the ice in a hurry.
“At the junior level, one thing you want to do is transition well,” Murray said. “It’s ‘get the puck back and let’s get going.’ I think we did have some success off the rush last year and it’s something we’ll emphasize once again. Combine that with that in-zone stuff and we have the opportunity to maybe be pretty good offensively.
“I really think with our guys getting a year older and having that experience and a promising group of first-year guys coming in, I think we have the ability to really improve on our offensive numbers from last year.”
Another key element will involve a changing of the guard in the dressing room.
Every junior team loses seemingly irreplaceable players every year, and that’s certainly the case with the Wheat Kings. Murray is a strong believer in team culture, and team captain Hyland and trade acquisition Jayden Wiens stepped up and led all season before they graduated.
“Those are two guys who worked hard and provided sandpaper to our lineup,” Murray said. “Those guys are getting harder and harder to find nowadays. They contributed in a lot of different ways. When you talk about the identity of the Brandon Wheat Kings, they exemplified what we want to be with their work and sticking their nose in. Their offence didn’t come from a lot of skill stuff, it came from working hard.
“That’s an area where everybody can make some ground and try to establish that in their game.”
» Previews of Wheat Kings camp continue all week in the Brandon Sun, with a look at the defencemen and goalies on Thursday and rookies and overagers on Friday.
» pbergson@brandonsun.com
» Twitter: @PerryBergson
