The Heat is On

Six games remaining. Six games to determine your fate. Six games to earn a playoff spot or fall short. As they, say, nothing comes easy.

A few times since the T-Birds climbed out of the Western Conference cellar and into that eighth playoff position, they've had a chance to put a fork into their nearest competition for that final playoff spot. They've just come up a little short. Back on February 21st they could have essentially ended Wenatchee's chances to stay in the hunt.  The T-Birds were four points up on the Wild. A win and Seattle would have been six points clear of the them in the chase. But Wenatchee came back late in that game to earn a 2-1 overtime win and stay within three points of Seattle.  Two weeks later and they are still just three points back. Seattle just can't seem to shake them.

March 4th at home, the T-Birds had the opportunity to put eight points between themselves and the Kamloops Blazers, but a subpar first period put the T-Birds in a three goal hole they couldn't climb out of and lost the game, 3-2. Instead of being eight points back the Blazers got within four points of the T-Birds. They are now six points back but that win kept them alive.

Even this past weekend, after a big road win in Portland, Seattle had a chance to again erase the Blazers from the chase and put Wenatchee on the verge of elimination, but another sluggish start and the T-Birds fell at home to the Winterhawks, 4-1.

I bring it up only as a reminder that this is a young team and so many of these players have not been in this situation in the WHL before, facing the pressure of needing to win almost every night. They are still developing their killer instinct, that need to follow up a big win with another big effort.  It will come.  Baby steps.

Despite not yet putting the hammer down on the Wild or Blazers, Seattle still controls their own fate.  Right now their magic number to clinch the final playoff spot outright is eight points.The T-Birds currently have 55 points, Wenatchee 52 and Kamloops 49.

With just five regular season games left, the most points Wenatchee can finish with, if they win their final five games, is 62 points. That would mean the T-Birds have to earn eight of 12 points in their final six games to finish ahead of the Wild.  Wenatchee's final five games? One against Kamloops, two versus Prince George and two against Everett. Four of those five, including their next four, are on the road. Only their final game of the season, against Everett, will be at home.  The odds they win out are pretty slim, but you never know.

Kamloops has six games, and a possible 12 points to play for. They do have three against the last-place in-the-conference Kelowna Rockets. They play Wenatchee once as well and have single games against Victoria and Vancouver. Four of their final six are at home. Again, the odds of a team with a .395 winning percentage winning their final six games seems remote but if they did they would finish with 61 points. That would mean the T-Birds would need to earn seven points in their last six games to eliminate the Blazers.

Because they play each other this Wednesday, we know one of the two teams, either Kamloops or Wenatchee, is not going to close out the season by winning all of their remaining games.  One of them is going to drop either two or a single point in that matchup.  So, in reality Seattle's magic number to clinch is either six or seven, depending on who wins and who loses that game Wednesday in Kamloops.

Of course a road win for Seattle Tuesday in Kennewick, the night before Kamloops and Wenatchee square off, would slice two points off the T-Birds magic number. It is very possible the 'Birds go into next weekend's three games in three nights, with a magic number of as few as five points. This is where the T-Birds advantage of controlling their own destiny comes in to play. Take care of business Tuesday night in Kennewick and you've almost forced the other two teams to win out to have a chance.

Of course beating the Americans is easier said than done. they are a tough out.But Seattle is coming off two big road wins in their last two road games. They beat Spokane last Saturday in Spokane, 6-3,and then Friday they went down to Portland and earned a 7-2 win.  It's the kind of road effort they will need Tuesday at the Toyota Center against Tri-City. 

In reality, the playoffs start now.

A few thoughts before I sign off:

Finn Bagley started the season with the T-Birds, stuck around a few weeks, and then was reassigned to the JPHL's Calgary Rockies U18 team. He had 11 goals in 16 games and them and then was recalled to Seattle in Mid-January. Though he has only played in seven games since his return and hasn't registered a point, I like what I have seen from 2008 born (16 year old) forward, in that limited sample. He plays with tenacity. As a result, he has a knack for drawing penalties.  A fifth round pick in the 2023 WHL Draft, he plays bigger than his 5"11, 169 lb frame would suggest. He just has the makings of another solid md-round pick by GM Bil LaForge and his scouting staff.

What to make of the T-Birds recent home-away goal scoring stats? Last three road games, 14 goals. Last seven home games, just 15 goals. To be fair, those home games have been, for the most part, low scoring affairs. Neither Seattle or their opponent are scoring a lot recently at the ShoWare Center. But maybe it is a good thing that four of Seattle's final six games are on the road.

I think most analysts would say that the T-Birds should have been a playoff team last season, based on their roster. Of course injuries clearly derailed that. Those same analyst might would argue that, again based on their very young roster, the T-Birds should miss the playoffs this season.  But here they are, with a chance good chance to be a 2025 playoff team.  I think that's coaching. 

More often than not, the Coach of the Year award in the WHL goes to the coach with the team at the top of the standings, one of the favorites to win the Cup (unless of course, you're the T-Birds coach as neither Steve Konowalchuk or Matt O'Dette have won the award despite both guys guiding the team to two two Western Conference titles and a Chynoweth Cup each. Heck, Dave Lowry won it twice in Victoria and they naver made it to a Conference Final, let alone the WHL Championship series. Makes you wonder why, But I digress). 

A few years back Portland's Mike Johnston was named the Western Conference Coach of the Year with a fifth place team. I think what Matt O'Dette has done with this T-Birds team the second half of the season deserves recognition. It may be his best work yet. I doubt he gets a sniff but he should at least be considered.

His first half will keep Scott Ratzlaff from consideration when it comes to awarding the top goaltender prize, but his second half has been phenomenal. Since the start of the new year he is 12-7-2-0 in 21 starts with a 2.37 GAA and .928 SVS. In those 21 starts he has faced 42 or more shots eight times. His .908 SVS on the season is the real measure of how good he has been in net for the T-Birds. This team isn't close to a playoff spot without him.

After 62 games and six plus months, it comes down to the final ix games to determine your fate. This is why we love hockey.

How Far We've Come

It's been a good 2025 thus far for the Seattle Thunderbirds. With their win Saturday at home over the Everett Silvertips, the T-Birds record since January 1st is 12-7-1-0. Only five of the T-Birds 20 games in the new year have been against a team with a losing record; three against Kelowna and two versus Wenatchee. Seattle went 3-1-1-0 in those five games, meaning the Thunderbirds record in 15 games against teams with winning records in the new year is a very solid 9-6. It includes two wins against the team with the best record in the WHL, Everett, a win agaisnt the team with the top record in the Eastern Conference, Medicine Hat, as well as a win versus B.C. Division leader Victoria.

When the calendar page turned from 2024 to 2025, the T-Birds sat in 11th place in the eleven team Western Conference.  Their 25 points had them five points behind Wenatchee for 10th place and seven points back of both Kelowna and Kamloops, who were tied for the 8th and final playoff spot in the west with 32 points each. They were coming off a month of December in which they had gone just 2-8-0-0 and ended the month on a five game losing streak.

Three games into 2025 The T-Birds went 1-2 while Kelowna was going 2-1 through their first three games, meaning Seattle was now nine points back of the Rockets for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference ten days into the new year. In fact, the Thunderbirds came off the Christmas break by losing five of their first six games to start the second half of the season, and had just traded away one of their best players, Sawyer Mynio.

Seven games into January and the 'Birds were 3-4. Respectable at nearly .500, but still staring up at a seven point deficit in the chase for that final Western Conference playoff spot. They still needed to climb over three teams in the standings. You can give up, or you can chose to get into the fight. Seattle chose to join the battle.

In reality, it wasn't until January 21st, one month ago, that the T-Birds began their climb out of the cellar. With their 7-1 win over the Vancouver Giants on January 21st, Seattle would begin a 13 game stretch in which they would go 9-3-1-0, vaulting them past Wenatchee, Kamloops and the Rockets into 8th place and a playoff postion. 

They have put together back-to-back winning months. With still one more February game to go, they have already put together their best month of the season at 6-2-1-0. They are four points up on Wenatchee for the final playoff spot in the west with a dozen games to go. They control their own destiny. They have done a one-eighty and turned their season around.

The schedule going forward is still going to be tough, inlcuding two 3-in-3 weekends where two of the three games will be on the road. Every game except one will be against a team with a winning record. But they have proven they can compete on a nightly basis with the best the league has to offer.  Where this ends, we don't know yet. That chapter has yet to be written, but these last two months may just be the best work GM Bil LaForge and head coach Matt O'Dette have done together since joining forces back in 2018. 

Some quick notes before I sign off:

1). Scott Ratzlaff is 11-2-1-0 in his last 14 starts. That inlcudes a 3-0 mark against the two teams currently sitting atop their respective divisions, Everett and Medicine Hat. In those three games he turned aside 110 shots or about 37 a game. Only two of the goals he gave up in those three games were in the third period. 32 saves on 34 shots with the game in the balance. If their was an MVP for the second half of the WHL season, he'd get my vote.

2). An unsung hero emerging almost every night. A game winning goal from Sawyer Mayes in Wenatchee, the fourth line stepping up with a tying goal from 16 year old Brendan Rudolph versus Everett with an assist to 16 year old Colton Gerrior. A Radim Mrtka shootout winner. Brayden Holberton with points in three of five games and Ashton Cumby blocking multiple shots every night. The list goes on. As O'Dette said, 20 guys for sixty minutes.

3). Next man up mentality. Last weekend Seattle plays three games in three days without their leading point prodcer, Braeden Cootes, in the lineup. They were missing Hyde Davidson, one of their top four d-men. They go 2-1 and came oh so close to a three game sweep.  This weekend they play two games without Nathan Pilling, their leading goal scorer, and earn three of four points. 3-1-1-0. Seven of ten points earned. Just two goals allowed in regulation in the two games this weekend. Team defense, led by Ratzlaff, is trending up.

The Hunter Becomes the Hunted

A strong effort over the last 18 games has propelled the Thunderbirds from being an afterthought to being a team being chased for the last playoff spot in the Western Conference. In fact 12 games ago, the T-Birds lost at home to the Kelowna Rockets, 5-2, and as a result were seven points out of a playoff spot, dead last in the West, needing to leapfrog three teams. Since then, they have gone 8-3 and now have a three point lead for the eighth seed.

How did we get here? Well, I think there are many factors but it starts at the top with the general manager, Bil LaForge. 

I think when we assess what makes a good GM, we generally look at two areas. Do they draft well and do they make smart trades? No one is going to be one hundred percent in those two categories, but with LaForge, the batting average in both areas is Ted Williams-esque. If you want to judge his body of work as a winning percentage, I would say he is well over .500.

Some examples of his best work? Drafting players like Reid Schaefer and Nico Myatovic in the later rounds. How about the trade with Kelowna at the 2019 draft that netted, among other things, a first round pick he turned into Kevin Korchinski. There was letting all the young players eat up all the ice time in the pandemic shortened season, hastening their learning curve which led to back-to-back trips to the WHL Championship Series.

There was recognizing that the Western Conferene was wide open in 2021-22, so he made a post-Christmas deal to acquire Lukas Svejkovsky, giving his lineup a little more pop. That extra offensive punch came in handy in winning bact-to-back seven game playoff series against Portland and Kamloops.

It was knowing he had a special core group of players in 2022-23 that could take the team far and he was willing to acquire the elite talent to help them win a Chynoweth Cup. He let them know he believed in them and was willing to pay a huge price to help them achieve that goal.

Now, there are those out there who say yeah, but what about 2023-24? Why didn't he sell off the high end assets he had left over from the championship roster to hasten the rebuild? Because on paper, he saw a roster that could compete and maybe had a couple of playoff rounds in them.  No one could have guessed the Chicago Blackhawks would keep Korchinski up in the NHL all season as a 19 year old.When Korchinski left T-Birds training camp that September for the Blackhawks NHL camp, he fully believed he was going to be sent back to Seattle. There was also a belief that Seattle could get Thomas Milic back for his 20 year old season but that too didn't happen.

Injuries decimated that team. Who could have predicted Myatovic getting hurt in a goal celebration in October of that year, essentially costing him two-thirds of the season.It wasn't just injuries, it was injuries to their best players, some long term: Gustafson, Mynio, Sawchyn and Dunn. It makes it hard to compete but it also makes it hard to trade assets that aren't healthy or even on your roster. HIndsight being 20/20 maybe deals should have been made but there are just some things you can't anticipate.  A GM doesn't have a crystall ball. 

Which brings us to 2024-25.  Traveling around the league the first half of the season, there was a definite vibe that Seattle was going to be a seller. After Christmas LaForge traded the rights to Jordan Gustafson to Lethbridge for four picks and overager Hayden Pakkala. He got five assets for a player who wasn't just not on the T-Birds roster, but hadn't played a game since last spring. The fire sale was on, right?

At the trade deadline in early January, he sent his best asset, Sawyer Mynio to Calgary, getting back six assets in return, including two first round draft picks. The last time Seattle got two first round picks for one player? You have to go back to 13 years when the T-Birds got two first round picks from Portland for Marcel Noebels. One of those picks turned into Keegan Kolesar, who just happened to lead the T-Birds in playoff scoring in the spring of 2017 when they won their first Chynoweth Cup.

So, there you have it. Seattle was selling off, looking to the future. They were dead last in the Western Conference, nine points out of the playoff picture with no chance. Postseason? Nope, just play out the second half and look forward to next year.

But then LaForge did something that caught eveyone off guard. In the final minutes leading up to the trade deadline, this GM of a last place, dead-in-the-water team, traded a third and a fourth round pick to Moose Jaw for Brayden Schuurman.

Is he crazy? What is he doing burning prime assets to bring in a 20 year old on a last place team.  I saw some of those online comments, not just from other fans around the league but from T-Birds fans as well.  LaForge just made the dumbest deal in the history of the WHL, if you read between the lines. What a loser!

Come on! It's not like he brought in a Dylan Guenther to light the lamp nightly and pile up dozens of points. In 13 games with Seattle Schuurman has just three goals, along with seven assists. Definitely not worth the price paid, right? Funny though, that before he arrived Seattle was well outside the playoff picture and now they are in the driver's seat for that last playoff spot.  That's because he, and Pakkala, brought leadership and a veteran presence to a young team.  They gave the team stability and let young players play down the lineup. 

But what LaForge did with that deal more than anything, was send a message to his young club and his coaching staff.  He told them with that trade, he believed in them. He said he trusted them to pick up their game and fight for that playoff spot.  It's not guarenteed Seattle will hold on to 8th place. They still have to fend off Kamloops, Wenatchee and Kelowna, so the possibility still exists that they miss the postseason despite that trade. But the players know their GM has their back, has their best interest at heart.  He understands how important a few postseason games can be for their development. As a result the players are juiced. they are pumped up and excited to be in the chase. They now go out on the ice each game, not hoping they'll win, but believing they will win.

Which brings us back to the initial question, what makes a great GM?  Sure, it's good drafting and making smart trades whether you are a buyer or a seller. It's also knowing that sometimes you have to be both a buyer and a seller. But don't overlook that intangible of knowing how to send a message to your players that you believe in them, that you have their backs. LaForge has that.

Before I sign off, some quick notes:

1). I loved Jordan Gustafson as a T-Bird. Huge part of their 2022 and 2023 playoff runs. Feel bad that injuries have sidetracked him the last two plus seasons now. I wish nothing more than for him to get healthy and have a long terrific pro career. I check the boxscore, even now that he is in Lethbridge, to see how he is doing. The only problem, he's not in the lineup lately. He's hurt again.  How frustrating. But if he gets healthy, he's going to help the Hurricanes in the postseason. He does have five goals for them but has only played five games.

Meanwhile, Pakkala, since coming to the T-Birds in that deal has 11 points (6g, 5a) in 20 games and is +7. Seattle used one of the third round picks in that Gustafson deal to acquire Schuurman. In 13 games with the T-Birds he has 10 points (3g, 10) and is +4. So combined Pakkala and Schuurman have played 33 games and have 23 points and are +11. Good deal for both sides.

2.) I firmly believe if the Pilling match penalty hadn't occured in the second period Monday afternoon in Portland, Seattle would be riding a five game winning streak. They were the better team for most of that game. The penalty led to a Portland power play goal and Seattle lost Pilling for the rest of the game. Already without Braeden Cootes, the absences changed the complexion of the game and Portland squeezed out a 4-3 win.  Now Seattle faces the possibility of playing some key games with Pilling, their leading goal scorer, suspended.

3.) Starting to see what LaForge and the T-Birds like about Sawyer Mayes, the player acquired in the Mynio/Clagary deal.  Remember he's a 2007, so just 17.  But he's another big body who can be a handful around the net and win battles along the boards. Nice, greasy game winning goal in Wenacthee Sunday and had a couple of close in chances Monday in Portland. He also had a breakaway in Portland but lost the puck at the last second and never got a shot off. That '07 forward group is gonna be fun to watch develop together with Cootes, Martorana, Holberton, Pekar, Charko and now Mayes.

4.) Scott Ratzlaff is back!  What a stretch! Ten wins in his last 12 starts, his first shutout since 2023  Sunday in Wenatchee, a terrific 40 save effort Saturday at home against the Winterhawks.  The team is playing better in front of him because his play behind them gives them confidence. If Seattle makes the postseason he is the biggest reason for their turnaround.