Dave Nichols: Not ‘now or never,’ but no time like the present for Spokane Chiefs playoff run
The Western Hockey League playoffs start Friday, with the Spokane Chiefs forced to open on the road in Vancouver – despite earning home-ice advantage by virtue of their third-place finish in the Western Conference.
It has been a good season. The Chiefs have tripled their win total over the past three seasons, and they earned more individual accolades this season than one could shake a hockey stick at.
But for it to be a truly great season, one that will be remembered as more than just a collection of individual awards, this team needs to make an impact in the playoffs.
There aren’t any moral victories in the postseason. There aren’t any more “learning moments” or “we’ll get ’em next time.”
As the great philosopher Yoda once said, “Do, or do not. There is no try.”
“It all starts with winning that first game and winning that first series,” Chiefs captain Berkly Catton said. “That’s kind of how we’re looking at it. But big picture, for it to be a great season it’s winning the (WHL) championship, pretty plain and simple.”
“This why you play. We had 68 dress rehearsals to get ready for this,” Chiefs head coach Brad Lauer said. “These are fun times. The weather is great. Springtime. The sun’s out. This is when you want to play. So, it’s exciting times for the young group that we have. And we’re looking forward to the journey.”
Everything Matt Bardsley and the rest of the organization has done since he took over as general manager of the Chiefs in May 2022 has pointed to this moment. Only now will we see if his labors come to fruition, or spoil on the ground.
“We’re starting to see, certainly not the finish line, but what we were hoping to get to with the plan,” Bardsley said.
Part of that plan has been shuffling players, coaches, staff – right down to equipment managers.
“It’s different philosophies, different vocabulary, just different personalities,” he said. “And then likewise, for a whole staff having to get used to new players and stuff. So that doesn’t just happen overnight. So I give our players, and I give our staff, a lot of credit to make this work and make it happen.”
All season, the Chiefs have pointed to this being a young roster, and it’s true that collectively they remain one of the younger rosters in the league. But that’s not to say it’s an inexperienced roster. Although reluctant to say or admit it, this is the last go-around with many players who make this team special.
Obviously, the three 20-year-olds – WHL leading goal scorer Shea Van Olm, productive Swedish center Rasmus Ekström, and decorated defenseman Brayden Crampton – will all graduate. But it’s entirely likely, bordering on probable, that NHL prospects Catton and Andrew Cristall will be playing professional hockey next year somewhere after both made good impressions with the Seattle Kraken and Washington Capitals, respectively, in the fall and put up 100-plus-point campaigns again.
Not only is that one-fifth of the overall roster, but it’s the Chiefs’ five top scorers. And not by a little bit.
There are plenty of good young players who will populate next year’s roster and step into those roles, but it will be a completely new team and leadership group.
“We are going to graduate some key guys. That’s part of junior hockey,” Bardsley said. “And so it’s everyone’s job, our jobs, to make sure that the players that are coming back, that they’re prepared to hit the ground running.”
Bardsley, to his credit, had a plan when he took the job and he stuck to it. Maybe some of the moves he made the first couple of seasons had fans scratching their heads, if not downright disappointed, as he traded away veteran players – fan favorites in some instances – in exchange for draft capital.
By design, that allowed the team to get much younger, draft higher in the first round, and have picks to later trade for veterans Van Olm, Cristall, Sam Oremba and Smyth Rebman once the plan started working.
But it also came with growing pains. The Chiefs went from 24 wins the season before Bardsley was hired, to just 15 in the 2022-23 season. That increased to 30 last season, and again to 45 this year.
“The past three years, they’ve been tough. And we’ve been through the tough times together,” Crampton said. “Some of these guys, they’ve played with me for four years now. And having them here now, just knowing what they’ve been through with me, and now going through what we’re going through now, is huge.”
Catton was a rookie on the 15-win team.
“It’s been a process, for sure,” he said. “You know, new management, new people, new players and such, have allowed us to kind of take that next step. … We’ve all wanted this. We’ve been through the tough times to get to here, and we’ve realized how much it (hurts) to not be a good team. And now we’re really cherishing this, being a good team and having a chance to do some damage.”
That’s incredible growth, but there’s no guarantee the good times will persist once this group of, frankly, generational talent moves on. They only have to look back a couple of years to see how quickly things can change.
The Chiefs reached the conference finals in 2019, falling to Vancouver in five games. Since then, they haven’t won a single playoff game, let alone series ( two postseasons were canceled due to COVID-19). A large chunk of this team remembers being swept last season as the No. 8 seed against conference champion Prince George. They know the bitter disappointment of reaching a goal, then being summarily dismissed.
“I haven’t won a WHL playoff game yet in my career, so that first win is going to be a great feeling,” Crampton said.
Each are determined to not let that happen again.
“This is my third year, and … We haven’t won a game, let alone a series,” Bardsley said. “We want to win that first game. That goes right back to not getting ahead of ourselves. Our focus, right now, is on Friday at Vancouver.”
“It might be a little hurdle to get over franchise-wise,” Van Olm said. “But, you know, there’s a lot of fresh blood in the room. There’s a lot of fresh blood in the staff.
“So I think, yeah, we can kind of wipe the slate clean and start on a new run.”
Van Olm knows a thing or two about the subject. He won a Memorial Cup with Lauer when they were both with Edmonton in 2022.
“I just keep telling (younger teammates), it’s a long road and you just gotta stay where your feet are,” he said. “It’s cliché, but it’s one game at a time. It’s a long, long road to get to any sort of trophy or any sort of history. Just stay in the moment and take every game, every shift one at a time.”
The playoffs present a unique aspect about Major Junior hockey. Obviously, everyone wants to win, but there are different aspects to it. The organization wants to win for the prestige and payoff, the fans want to win for bragging rights, and the players want to win not only for the names on the front of the jerseys, but the back as well. It’s a given that players with not just playoff experience but success are held in higher regard.
“Everybody definitely wants to (win) for Spokane,” Cristall said. “They want do it for every teammate of ours. And you know, they also want to move on, and play pro eventually, whether that’s NHL or AHL or whatnot. So when you start winning (playoff) games and you keep getting further down the line, more (pro scouts) will start showing up and watching and paying attention.”
“Part of the reason that we brought (Lauer) in is he’s had success at the junior level. He understands everyone wants to get to the NHL level, and he’s been there as a player, and most recently, as a coach,” Bardsley said. “So he understands what it takes to get there, but most importantly, what it takes to stay there. I think he’s done a really good job – him, the coaching staff and our training staff – of trying to instill those qualities.”
The WHL playoffs offer an opportunity for everyone to get what they want. And this year, the prize is legitimately there for the taking – the Chiefs have been ranked in the top 10 of not just the WHL, but the entire Canadian Hockey League all season. They have as good of a chance as anyone of emerging from the WHL and reaching the Memorial Cup tournament – where it can go from a great season to a legendary one.
Whether they seize that opportunity is up to the players on the ice alone. Do, or do not.