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.