I'll Take a Dozen

The Thunderbirds finished off their February schedule in fine fashion, sweeping a pair of home games from division rivals Tri-City and Portland. In the process they extended their current winning streak to a season best ten game.  Seattle finishes the month with an 11-1-0-0 mark. The only blemish was a 1-0 loss February 4th in Everett.  In fact, the T-Birds are 15-2-0-0 since returning off their eastern road trip.

We are now down to the final twelve games of the regular season.  Seattle has already wrapped up their playoff spot. They've clinched home ice for the opening round of the postseason. They'll use these dozen March games to try and check off a few more goals on their list before the postseason begins. First up is claiming the U.S. Division banner. After defeating Portland Saturday, they have whittled their magic number for doing that to a scant eight points. It's a goal they could possibly reach next weekend when they play three times in three days.

After that they'll look to clinch the best record in the Western Conference. It's basically down to Seattle and Kamloops. The T-Birds enter the final twelve games with a ten point lead over the Blazers. Kamloops does have a game in hand.  The two teams will meet three times in March.  The Thunderbirds do have a slightly more difficult schedule remaining, but they control their own destiny.  If Seattle can continue their domination of the U.S. Division then the Kamloops games won't matter in the chase.  Five of Seattle's next six games are against Tri-City and Everett.  Collectively the Thunderbirds are 10-2-0-0 against the Americans and Silvertips this season. 

Seattle is one point behind Winnipeg for the Scotty Munro Trophy that goes to the team with the best overall regular season record in the WHL.  Winnipeg does have two games in hand, so the T-birds would need help to claim that crown.  Remember last season though? Winnipeg won the Scotty Munro Trophy but didn't advance past the Eastern Conference Final, losing to Edmonton.

Maybe the most important goal going forward for Seattle is getting and staying healthy. This second half is somewhat similar to the T-Birds second half a season ago. They dealt with a lot of injuries but got healthy just as the postseason began and went on a run that carried them to the WHL Championship Series. Let's hope history repeats itself.

During their current ten game winning streak the Thunderbirds have allowed a paltry ten goals to the opposition, outscoring their opponents 53-10. In the month of February, Seattle surrendered just sixteen goals in twelve games. That's a mind blowing stat. In the twelve games played in February, Seattle outscored the opposition 59-16. On the season the Thunderbirds have given up a league low 126 goals, 13 fewer than Winnipeg and Saskatoon.

Seattle played Saturday without three NHL draft picks, Jared Davidson, Colton Dach and Jordan Gustafson in the lineup.  Two NHL first round picks, Brad Lambert and Dylan Guenther, didn't register a point.  The T-Birds still won, 4-1. 

How? Because depth players like Sam Popowich and Tij Iginla, among others, stepped up and delivered.  With all the high end talent on this team, with ten NHL draft picks on the roster, a player like Popowich can fly under the radar. But Saturday his value was on full display against Portland. He wins puck battles, he wins faceoffs and he's one of the team's best penalty killers. With Gustafson sidelined for over a month now, Popowich has stepped in and filled that void. You win championships with players like Poppy.

My Three T-Birds Stars for the Week (last four games):

Third Star: G Thomas Milic. By a hair I give my third star to Milic over Scott Ratzlaff. Both goalies went 2-0. Both goalies allowed just one goal against. Both posted a shutout. But based on his 15-save third period Saturday against Portland, I give Milic the edge.  He didn't just close the door on a Portland comeback attempt, he slammed it shut. 

Second Star: C/W Sam Popowich. He earned five points (2g, 3a) in the four games and finished with a plus/minus rating of plus six. He also won more than fifty percent of his faceoffs (30/46) and was instrumental in the Thunderbird going a perfect 16-for-16 on the penalty kill. He's a prototypical plug and play type players. Seattle's coaches can and do use him up and down the lineup.

First Star: LW Reid Schaefer. Welcome back to the goal scoring Reido! After a 14 game stretch where he couldn't buy a goal, he finished the week with four.  Eight points in his last three games (4g, 4a). Two of his goals were game winners. In fact nearly one-third of his 23-goals this season (7) are game winning goals, which leads the team. This week he became the fifth Thunderbird to hit the 20-goal mark this season.

 

Chemistry 101

Another taking-care-of-business weekend for Seattle. They play twice, win both times and now sit alone atop the Western Conference, as well as U.S Division standings.  And it's not like they played the bottom teams either.  The combined record of Seattle's two opponens this weekend; 72-23-3-5. The two teams, Red Deer and Portland, were atop their respective divisions at the time Seattle played them. Add up their goal totals this season and together they have scored 395 times. The Thunderbirds outscored them 12-1.

So much talk of all the offensive fire power Seattle now has. The team now has three of the top eight WHL point producers from last season on their roster in Kyle Crnkovic, Dylan Guenther and Jared Davidson. But what's the old saying? Defense wins championships and over their last four games the Thunderbirds have surrendered just three goals. 

Good players, elite players, are that because they can play a complete game, not just put the puck in the back of the net. Guys like Crnkovic, Guenther and Davidson can score, but they can also defend. Also, part of being a good defensive team is being a good offensive team. The more you have the puck in the attacking zone, the less time you spend in you own zone.  

So has Seattle settled on line combinations now?  I think they like the way their lines played this weekend. But remember, the Thunderbirds will get Colton Dach and Jordan Gustafson healthy within the next two to three weeks (knock on wood), so the work in the lab will continue.  Do you keep the top two lines you utilized this weekend together and insert Dach and Gustafson on the third line when they come back? Do you juggle your top nine once again upon their return?  What current top nine forwards get pushed down to the fourth line? What fourth liners lose ice time?  

It had to be a tough decision Saturday to sit Ashton McNelly. He's done everything the coaches have asked of him since his arrival in December.  He's contributed a few points and been a physcial presence. It will be interesting moving forward to see how the Thunderbirds spread around those fourth line minutes.

It's a good problem to have as Seattle will be looking to mix and match seven NHL drafted forwards, two more who are most likely to be drafted this spring and a high scoring undrafted 20 year old, while getting games for their bottom five. I think they've created good chemistry among their top six defenseman, but they also know those pairngs are interchangeable. 

Curious about the chase for the top of the Western Conference?  Here are some numbers to mull over. 

Going forward Seattle will play just five different teams in their last 19 games. They still have five left against Portland, six against Tri-City, three versus both Victoria and Kamloops and two against Everett. They have 11 left at home and eight on the road. The combined record of their remaining opponents is currently 136-94-19-7. Their remaining opponents are a combined 42 games over .500

Portland, right on Seattle's heels has 17 games left. They will play eight teams over those final 17 games. They have six home games remaining and 11 on the road. The combined record of their remaining opponents is currently 160-162-20-9. Their remaining opposition is a collective two games under .500

Kamloops, the B.C. Division leader and just six points back of Seattle for the top of the conference, has 19 games left.  Twelve of those games will be on the road with just seven at home. Those 19 games will feature 12 different opponents. The combined record of their remaining opponents is 269-277-39-15. That means the teams left on their schedule together are eight games under .500. 

Wondering about the Scotty Munro Trophy as WHL regular season champions? Winnipeg is currently the front runner. They are three points ahead of the Thunderbird with a game in hand. Of their final 20 games, eight will be at home and 12 on the road. They play ten different opponents the rest of the way. The one Eastern Conference team they don't play anymore is Saskatoon The combined record of the teams left on their schedule is 240-226-32-15 or 14 games over .500.

My Thunderbirds Three Stars for the Weekend:

Third Star: D Nolan Allan. Allan was solid as a rock on the back end this weekend, blocking shots, knocking pucks out of harms way and constantly taking pucks off the sticks of opposing players. He plays a heavy, physical game and his strength in in the defensive zone. Still, he chipped in with three assists in the two games. He's +5 in his last three games.  

Second Star: C Brad Lambert. Lambert's biggest contribution has been helping Seattle get the power play to be a more consistent piece of the T-Birds arsenal.  On the weekend he scored one power play goal and assisted on another.  In eight games since being assigned to Seattle, he has six goal. Three of them are power play goals.  His even strength goal Saturday in Portland was just another of example of getting pucks on net and good things happen. Not every goal has to be pretty. This one deflected in off a defender's skate. Just two games in and you can see the chemistry developing between he and another newcomer, Dylan Guenther.

First Star: G Thomas Milic.  Milic went 2-0-0-0 on the weekend, pitching a 36 save shutout against Portland on Saturday. He was dialed in with a number of saves being of the spectacular variety.  Too many to choose from but two of his best were in the second period, right before Seattle scored and then right after. In a span of a few minutes he created momentum for his team and then squashed it for the opposition. In two games he stopped 60 of 61 shots. He finished with a GAA average of 0.50 and a save percentage of .984. In his last three starts Milic has turned aside 80 of 82 shots. 

The Name of the Game is Winning

It sounds crass to say, but in the world of sports, players are commodities. You acquire them, you trade them, you use them to improve your portfolio.  In that same vein, draft picks are like coupons. You use them to barter, spend and trade to get the players you want to build a winner. It sounds harsh but that’s the reality. Sports is business and the business of sports is winning.

Unfortunately, in sports leagues, there can be just one winner. Doesn’t matter if it is the NHL, the NFL, NBA or the WHL. Only one team is left standing at the end of the season. How the winner arrives at that destination is up to them.

In an ideal world teams would just draft a team full of players, develop them, win a championship and celebrate their success without ever having to make a trade. It’s a very romanticized way of thinking. It just never happens that way though.  Trades are part of the process.  Whether you’re trading players for picks or picks for players every league has a transaction page on their website.

It doesn’t make you a better organization because you only made one minor deal to improve your team on your way to a title.  Doesn’t make you a worse organization if you got your championship by trading for half the roster.  It’s just two different paths to the same goal of winning it all.

Seattle did it in 2017 with a few minor tweaks to their team.  They added Rylan Toth before the season began. Midseason they made a small, under-the-radar move to acquire Tyler Adams.  I hear chatter about how Seattle did it the “right way”, with a mostly homegrown team they drafted and developed. Such a sweet notion.

But let’s not kid ourselves. To get that homegrown team the Thunderbirds had to go through some dark, nonplayoff seasons. As a result, they ended up with high picks in the WHL draft.  They won the draft lottery and Matt Barzal fell into their laps.  But they also traded away Marcel Noebels and used the first round pick they got back from Portland to select Keegan Kolesar.  Kolesar led Seattle in playoff scoring. Did those dark days sour your enjoyment of the Cup they won?

Six players on the Thunderbirds 2017 Championship team were players acquired in trades and that number has to include Kolesar, because he was a Thunderbird only because of the Noebels trade.  Who knows how many other players on that team were drafted with a draft pick Seattle acquired from another team in a trade years earlier?

I saw someone mention they didn’t want to become the next Edmonton Oil Kings. Edmonton won the 2022 WHL Championship (beating the T-Birds) but have fallen to the bottom of the league this season.  They traded away a lot of picks to build that Chynoweth Cup winner and now the cupboard, according to some, is bare.

But the Edmonton Oil Kings are exactly who you should want the Thunderbirds to become.  The Oil Kings arrived in the WHL as an expansion team in 2006. In just sixteen seasons (really 14 because you can’t count the two Covid non-playoff years) they have won three WHL Championships and one Memorial Cup. You could probably argue they would have more titles if not for Covid because they were built to win those two years as well. They’ve been to the WHL Championship Series four times since 2006. On average that’s one Eastern Conference Championship every four seasons. In a league as cyclical as the WHL, that’s a damn good winning percentage.

They’ve been to the top of the WHL mountain, fallen back to the base and climbed back up to the top again more than once. In Major Junior Hockey, that is the way to play the game.  They do it by drafting well, trading smartly and rebuilding and restocking their system through terrific scouting and astute deal making.  They are the model WHL franchise, and the Thunderbirds could do well to emulate that. Why wouldn't you want to be the next Edmonton Oil Kings?

Do you realize the Oil Kings have already just about recouped every draft pick they traded away to build last season’s championship club? I would almost stake my paycheck on them being back on top in the WHL in three to four seasons, if not sooner.

Winning a championship is euphoric. Even as someone who has just been along as an observer. I can understand the high of winning. I was broadcasting PLU football back in the ‘90s win they won a national title. I was with the Tacoma Sabercats organization when they captured a WCHL championship in 1998 and I was with the Thunderbirds in Regina in 2017 when they claimed the Chynoweth Cup.  What a rush each time.

But I was also with all three of those teams when they came up just short. I can still picture the scene in the PLU locker room after they lost a national title game in Georgetown, Kentucky. It was like a morgue.  I remember the suddenness of defeat when the Sabercats twice lost the Taylor Cup. There were tears and heartbreak. And I remember when the Thunderbirds lost out to Brandon in 2016 in their quest for the WHL crown.  Getting so close only to come up short comes with an eerie silence. I call it the sound of defeat.

And the overriding theme of all those teams that lost was, what more could we have done? What didn’t we do. What step did we overlook that could have gotten us to the top?  Losing a championship eats at you.  I had a very successful player, who turned into a very successful coach, once tell me you dwell more on the losses, the shots that didn’t go in, then you do the games you won or the goals you scored. Losing sticks on you like a bad odor.

The Thunderbirds remember how it felt to lose last spring to Edmonton. They don’t want to get to the end of this season and think, what more could we have done? There is no guarantee they will win it all with the moves they have made, but they want to know that they have put all their bullets in the chamber.

My Three T-Birds Stars for the past week:

Third Star: C/W Jared Davidson. Seven points (2g, 5a) in the four games for the Montreal Canadians prospect, including assists an all three goals Sunday versus Spokane.  He is on pace for a 93 point season. The T-Birds have not had a 90-point player since Brooks Laich finished with 94 in the 2002-03 season.

Second Star: D Kevin Korchinski.  The 2022 Chicago Blackhawks first round pick earned seven points himself in the four games with a goal and six assists. In his WHL career he now has 122 assists in 125 games. he has 41 assists in just 34 games this season.

First Star: C Brad Lambert. After the wait to clear up his visa issue, he finally arrived in Kent and did so loudly with four points (3g, 1a) in just three games. Among those three goals were two game winners, and two power play goals.  he now has seven points (4g, 3a) in just six games with the Thunderbirds and he's still getting comfortable with his new team.