THAT WAS GR8

 Cliches you often hear about winning: 

1.Defense wins championships.  

2.The best defense is a good offense.

They seem like contradictory statements but they both can be true at the same time, especially in the game of hockey. Seattle's first two games of the season are exhibit A.  

Opening night on the road, the T-Birds are in a scoreless battle. To give themselves a chance to win, they have to keep the puck out of their net until they can find some offense. It starts with stellar play from their goalie, Grayson Malinoski. He is literally the last line of defense.  But it's also five guys in front of him clearing rebounds, blocking shots and getting pucks up ice, free of the defensive zone. It's killing off penalties. Team defense. Eventually they win 1-0 in overtime.

Saturday at home it's an eight goal explosion. It's putting pressure on the opposing team's goal with a strong forecheck. It's going hard to the net and getting greasy goals. It's forcing turnover inside the opponent's blue line. It's cycling the puck below the opponent's goal line. It's having the puck on your stick more than the opposition has it on their sticks. It's rolling four lines and three defensive pairs in a seamless fashion. Team offense. 

If you combine the two, you're going to win more games than you lose, thus Seattle is off to a 2-0 start. It has helped that the T-Birds get a soft start to the season. One game opening weekend, one game this weekend and just one game next weekend,  Eventually though, the schedule will ramp up.  We'll see how they respond to playing back-to-back nights and three games in five days as they will when October rolls around. But winning, like playing an instrument or learning to drive a car, is a learned habit. The more you do it, the better you get at it.  early on the T-Birds are learning the valuable lessons of what it takes to win.

Talking to head coach Matt O'Dette and to some of the players after Saturday's home opening win, there was a common theme. They all said some variation of the same thing; every player contributed to the win whether their name was on the scoresheet or not. A compete twenty player effort. No one was taking all the credit. The players were as eager to praise the teammate who didn't score a goal or get an assist, as they were the player with a multiple point night. It's an acknowledgement that you win as a team and you lose as a team. All for one and one for all.

There have been some very good goalies to come through the organization over the fifty years of the franchise's existence.  But Saturday night Grayson Malinoski put his name in the team record book by doing something that hadn't been done before, two consecutive shutouts to open the season. Sixty-three saves and a pair of Ws for the Saskatoon native. At the end of Game Five of last spring's first round playoff loss to Penticton, I saw someone pick up a copy of the T-Birds team roster, study it, then say Seattle may have one of the best goaltending tandems returning for the 2026-27 season. That tandem is off to a good start and we haven't even seen Marek Sklenicka, the NHL draft pick, play a game yet.

An eight goal explosion in game two, a 2-0 record and the team's most potent offensive weapon, Brock England, has yet to light the lamp. One assist through two games for the team's leading returning scorer from a season ago. Just wait 'til he gets the goal scoring going. And he will. Just the threat of his offensive prowess has opponents looking sideways when he's out there. He led the team with six shots Saturday so he's gonna get dialed in.

One gray cloud through the first two games. Defenseman Tai Riley, hurt in training camp (upper body injury) wasn't able to heal up so he's had a procedure that will keep him out a couple of months. Get well soon Tai!

My Three Stars for the first two games of the season:

Thrid Star. D Grayson Tash.  Headsy pass to set up the overtime winner in Wenatchee last weekend. A goal and an assist and a +3 in the home opener. Seattle added a lot of high end talent to their back end n the offseason including a couple of NHL draft picks. Those guys played well in their WHL debuts Satruday, but it was the returning d-man Tash who stepped up his game.

Second Star. C Sawyer Mayes.  Mayes had a terrific training camp and preseason. He attended rookie camp with the NHL's Buffalo Sabres.  He's playing with a lot of confidence right now. Solid in the face off circle as usual opening night on the road then followed that up with a four assist, +5 performance in the 8-0 win Saturday at home.

First Star. G Grayson Malinoski. Opened the season with a 31-save shutout on the road and earned WHL Goalie of the Week honors. Followed that with a 32-save shutout performance in the home opener. He finished last season with a strong second half and is building off that through his first two starts this season. Dare we say WHL Goalie of the Month?

From Zero to Hero

It was a scoreless game for 64 minutes opening night in Wenatchee. Chances aplenty at both ends, with two goaltenders playing in midseason form. Then Luke Puchner, with a little help from Noah Kosick and Grayson Tash, ended the drama and put his name in the T-Birds history book.  What a way to make your debut with an opening night, overtime game winner! The new kid from New Germany knew what to do with the puck. The T-Birds have been around 50 years and you see something new every season.

Not sure I'm a fan of the new overtime rules. Maybe it just takes some getting used to. There is something anticipatory about watching a team take the puck into the offensive zone, wheel all the way back down into the defensive zone for a reset, then build up speed and rush back onto the attack to score. 

Like Michael Scott, I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious! There have been a few times over the past few years where it looked like goalie Grayson Malinoski was on the cusp of pitching a shutout, only to have a late goal sneak through. So as the game wore on and that zero was still up on the board, I made sure not to bring up the subject on the broadcast, lest I jinx him. Not even a glancing thought. Then, as extra time started, I was thinking, please don't get through sixty minutes unscathed and give one up in the OT!  He earned that shutout, especially with some big time saves in the second period when the Wild were on the power play three times.

One thing you know about opening weekend in the WHL, you can't get a read on where any team is going to finish six months later based on these early results.  Rare that teams are at full strength. Too many top players on just about every team are still at NHL camps. No one is playing with a full deck yet. But one thing I noticed about the T-Birds not only opening night, but going back to training camp and the preseason? They were "bought in". They played as a complete unit, were mostly fundamentally sound and there was just a feeling of cohesion about the way they played.  By no means are they a finished product, but they have laid the foundation.

The T-Birds rebuilt a good chunk of their D-corps this offseason. With the departures of Ashton Cumby, Radim Mrkta and Joe Gramer, they needed to reload.  So they brought in Jonas Kemps, Henry Schmiel, Owen Hayden and Reko Alanko to supplement returning blue liners like Brennan Hocher, Tai Riley and Grayson Tash.

Only problem this weekend was that three of those d-men were unavailable for various reasons for the opener against Wenatchee. No Alanko, no Kemps and no Riley. Even 16-year old rookie and 2025 first round pick Brook Haile was on the shelf. So big props to Ethan Creran and Affiliate Player Jackson Beggs for stepping up into that void and giving Seattle solid shifts on the blue line.  

Beggs will evenutally be reassigned, but when everyone is back and available they have one of those good problems on their hands. Finding ice time for a D-corps that is at least 7-8 players deep.

Speaking of d-men, Henry Schmiel at one point last year was listed at 6'0", 235 lbs. My first thought was, that's not a hockey player, that's a linebacker!  He told me this summer he has actually slimmed down to 210 lbs. After watching him opening night, he confirmed to me he is a hockey player...who hits like a linebacker.  And he skates quite well. On more than one occasion he caught up to an odd man rush by the Wild and broke up the play before it could ignite.

It was clear to me in the preseason and clear to me opening night, opposing teams are focusing on Brock England.  They're going to try and be physical with him. Just so you know, he won't back down. he'll give as good as he gets. Other teams know England is the T-Birds offensive catalyst. But that should open up opportunities for his linemates. That's what good players do, they make the players around them better.  

Quick thoughts after the opener:  

One game into his tenth season at the helm Matt O'Dette is 14 wins shy of 300 wins as Thunderbirds head coach. Two championships, two U.S. Division banners, four Western Conference titles earned and two trips to the Memorial Cup in his tenure (asst. coach and head coach) and still, after nine seasons, one of the most underrated head coaches in the WHL. Excluding the Covid years, the only season he missed the playoffs (2024), his team was decimated by injuries. You'll not convince me that both he and his predecessor, Steve Konowalchuk, were not slighted when it came to selecting a WHL Coach of the Year during their championship runs. Insane.

Power play and penalty kill are still a work in progress. Getting players back will help.

Watching the new players interact off the ice with the returning players, after just a month of being together? This is already a close group.

Off topic, the area around Wentachee/Chelan/Leavenworth has some of the best fall foliage in the region.

One down, 67 more to go!