PR - Wheat Kings

Wheat Kings Season Review (Sept 1)

The Wheat Kings season can best be summed-up in one word: cursed. Despite making the playoffs, finishing fourth in their conference, fifth in the league, nothing went well for the Kings this year: standing on top of the league at the mid-point the Kings played below .500 hockey for the last part of the season and lost a lot of ground, over half their roster finished on the negative side of +/-, their goaltending tandem of Kevin Weekes and Ilja Bryzgalov collapsed in the most epic fashion and have left a most troubling question as to the competive future of the Kings, but perhaps most hurtful of all has been their bad fortune in trades - time and again the Kings would send-off a player playing well below his ability only to see that below suddenly come alive with his new time and perform beyond all possible expectations: Scott Hartnell, Martin Cibak, Andre Kostitsyn. This only compounded the pain being felt by the Kings as their own players were almost all to the man playin
g below their ability, the only player that in any way surpassed expectations was eighteen year-old Niklas Bergfors. Bergfors, the Kings first round selection (12th overall) in the last draft, was not expected to make pro, but because of his solid play ended-up playing sixty-four games and earning fifty-one points, at which ppg over the course of the full season he would have been at the top of the rookie-scorers and a very worthy Calder candidate.

Other than Bergfors though this season was a terrible disappointment to the Wheat Kings and GM Tyler Young recently went on record stating that he will try to make some significant changes over the course of the off-season. Free agency would be the most immediate option and with only about twelve million dollars tied-up for next year the Kings could definately throw their weight around there; GM Young also stated that trades are also possible with no King being untouchable, although core-players such as Dimitri Kazionov, Stever Bernier, Nik Bergfors, and Matt Jones would likely be somewhat more difficult to attain.

"We'll have to see what happens in the playoffs," Mr. Young said, "but after our last forty games I'm not expecting much. So yeah, expect a major overhaul: we will need to work on all our positions, defence - maybe deal one or two of our guys and bring in some other guys - forwards need some work, I'll see if I can do anything as far as trades, but we will need to add at least one more player - and goal, we need to pick-up a veteran, talented goalie so we have someone we can rely on."