PR - Wheat Kings

OFF-SEASON MEET AND GREET

After missing the playoffs last season as defending TFHL Champions, Wheat-watchers were no doubt curious as to which direction the team would go this off-season: would there be a major shake-up? Significant FA signings? Who would come and who would go?

Perhaps suprisingly, Kings management responded with a series of relatively quiet moves which were designed to substantially improve the team without giving-up any major assets. Sunday the team called a conference to introduce the newly crowned Wheat Kings to the media and to discuss the upcoming season.

Joining the team are former Hart Trophy winner Peter Forsberg, one-time 80 point man Alexei Shkotov, long time Ace Dominic D'Amour, and offensive d-men Karel Rachunek and Jesse Lane.

Forsberg signed a two-year $30 million deal, the biggest contract in Kings history, but as Mr. Young commented: "I think we managed to grap the best potential UFA on the market this off-season."

"I'm just happy to be coming back to Saskatoon, and the Wheat Kings especially," Forsberg said. "My TFHL career began across town with the Senators [Saints] and then I got traded here half-way through that season."

"This will probably be my last contract and I wanted to end my career with this organization. I really regretted not being part of the championship run, but I knew a lot of the guys here and so I could at least enjoy it for their sake. However, I intend to win it before I retire and with the changes that Mr. Young made this offseason, I think we have as good a shot as any team."

Nevertheless, most of the talk was on the previous season.

"Last year was a wash," Coach-GM Tyler Young began an extended mea culpa, "a lot of things went wrong. We made some major changes in the off-season which were causing problems very early on and it took us nearly the whole season to rectify those issues. Then on top of everything, we had serious injury problems for most of the last two thirds of the season and the Stuart deal caused a total collapse of our defensive system. The whole year it felt like we were in quicksand, and the more we struggled the worse it got."

The good news though for Grain-brains is that the slate is now wiped clean. After only the second time the Kings have missed the playoffs in seven years, the team that will hit the ice opening night is perhaps the best Kings squad since the President Trophy winning team of TFHL14 (which followed the only other season that the Kings have missed the playoffs).

"We do have hopes for this team," Mr. Young noted. "We're expecting that it will be more integrated than last year's group. Our core group, which has already won a Cup, is still intact and getting better. We just pulled in some new guys to fill holes, guys we think will fit our style of play - complement the pieces we already have."

"Yes there are some concerns," he continued, "but we'll see how they play out. The West is only getting tougher - the Raiders for instance have improved substantially this offseason. But if Howard can rediscover his old self and our defence can perform as well as they did in the closing fifteen games of last season, then we should be ok. We just have to get back to our old identity: keep shots against down and grind it out, and hopefully we can add a more commanding offense to that."

NEWS & NOTES: Long time King and former Alka-Seltzer Trophy winner Slava Suchy has decided to retire, meaning that forwards Brad Larsen and Shawn Horcoff are the lone members of the inaugural TFHL12 Wheat Kings still playing for the organization. Horcoff though was traded and re-signed to a minor league contract a couple of seasons later, so only Larsen has played all seven seasons with the Kings... this will be Peter Forsberg's third stint with the Wheat Kings, in his previous two terms he never lasted a full season.