Rudyard Kipling wrote, albeit in a complete other setting, that East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. Well, the twain at least met in the Western Hockey League on Wednesday night as the two East-West geographic bookend franchises of the league played their once-every-season game, alternating every other year between Manitoba and the Island.
This meeting between clubs, located 2,180 kilometres apart, ended in the most peculiar of fashions before 2,925 fans at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre. The Royals rattled what looked to be the possible winning goal off the cross-bar and the puck ricocheted out to centre ice, where it was picked up by Jaxon Jacobson of the Wheat Kings, who happened to just be coming out of the penalty box behind the Victoria defence. Jacobson went in alone and beat WHL goaltender of the week Jayden Kraus with 46 seconds remaining in regulation time to give Brandon the 5-4 victory to end the Royals’ (23-12-7) six-game winning streak. It was officially recorded a power-play goal with Victoria’s usually gentlemanly Finnish-import and Winnipeg Jets prospect Markus Loponen serving an inexplicable late-game four-minute, double-minor penalty for high-sticking that proved costly.
Victoria opened scoring in the second period with one of the goals of the season as Kenta Isogai fed Hayden Moore, who scored short-handed on the back hand after making a sublime move beat the last Brandon defender. The Wheaties tied it through Joby Baumuller with Carter Klippenstein drawing an assist. Both those forwards are ranked 146th and 121st, respectively, by Central Scouting for the 2025 NHL draft. Brayden Boehm put Victoria ahead again on the power play. Recently acquired Wheaties forward Jordan Gavin, ranked 123rd for the NHL draft, tied it 2-2 before the second period expired with former Royals defenceman Luke Shipley drawing an assist. Teydon Trembecky, who came to Victoria in the trade involving Shipley in November of 2022, scored his 23rd goal of the season to put the Royals in the lead early in the third period. Toronto Maple Leafs draft-pick Brandon Lisowsky, the pure goal scorer the Royals had been lacking, scored his sixth goal in his sixth game since being acquired by Victoria from the Saskatoon Blades, and 28th of the season to make it 4-2. Brandon responded with Marcus Nguyen’s 21st goal, with Czech world junior championship bronze-medallist Dominik Petr gaining an assist, and a goal by Shipley to tie it 4-4.
Victoria forward Cole Reschny, ranked for the second round of the 2025 NHL draft, missed his second consecutive game and is day-to-day with a lower-body injury. The Wheat Kings were again missing forward Roger McQueen, the No. 5 overall ranked North American skater for the NHL draft, who has been out since scoring eight goals over the first eight games of the season. Not many teams can survive that sort of loss unscathed but the Wheat Kings are still to the good at 20-13-5, although one might wonder what their record would have been with McQueen in the lineup. But they do have Gavin, Klippenstein, Baumuller, Shipley, Petr, Nguyen and Victoria-produced blue-liner Giorgos Pantelas. That’s not to mention goaltender Carson Bjarnason, the signed 2023 NHL second-round draft pick of the Philadelphia Flyers who was invited to the Canadian selection camp for the world junior championship, although it was back-up Ethan Eskit who got the start Wednesday and made 29 saves. Kraus stopped 35 shots for Victoria.
The Royals prepare to meet the Western Conference 10th place Kamloops Blazers (15-21-3) on Friday and Saturday nights at the Memorial Centre.
