Graduating Profile: Mirwald Ultimate Example of Perserverance
This week, the Vancouver Giants will look back on the junior careers of their three overage players with a written profile on each one, releasing a story every other day in alphabetical order. On Monday, we begin by highlighting defenceman Logen Hammett. Today, we will highlight goaltender Brett Mirwald. On Friday, we will finish with a profile on defenceman Wyatt Wilson.
With each passing game this season, it became more and more difficult to come up with new ways to describe the play of goaltender Brett Mirwald.
“Outstanding.” “Unbelievable.” “Spectacular.”
All words that were used again and again and again, and rightfully so. In a year where Mirwald was nominated for the Del Wilson Trophy, awarded annually to the Western Hockey League Goaltender of the Year, none of these adjectives are surprising.
But what may surprise some, is that just two years ago, Mirwald was playing in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League for the Waywayseecappo Wolverines.
The Saskatoon, Sask. product had previously gotten a taste of WHL action in the East Division ‘bubble’ during the shortened COVID season – making his first career appearance on March 16, 2021 in relief as a member of the Moose Jaw Warriors. In that game, Mirwald was perfect against the Regina Pats, stopping all 27 shots he faced as the Warriors came back from a 4-1 deficit to win 5-4 in overtime.
“Obviously it wasn’t what you expect,” Mirwald said about his first WHL game action. “It’s tough getting thrown in, especially when it’s your first kind of taste in the league, but I even say now to this day, I actually kind of gained confidence from that and I use it today.
“It was a cool first start.”
Mirwald, then a 17-year-old rookie and graduate of the Saskatoon Blazers program, ended up playing more than 19-year-old Boston Bilous in the bubble season, finishing with an .895 save percentage in 16 games.
But the following season, 2021-22, Mirwald found himself in a battle for the backup role behind Carl Tetachuk, who the Warriors acquired in the off-season. After only three starts in October, the Warriors decided to keep 16-year-old Jackson Unger instead, leaving Mirwald without a WHL gig.
Mirwald would play 15 regular season games and three playoff games for Waywayseecappo that season.
The next summer, on June 28, 2022, the Giants acquired Mirwald from Moose Jaw for a conditional sixth round pick, giving him another chance to earn a WHL backup role.
This time, Mirwald absolutely ran with it.
“Definitely a high level of excitement for me and I did see it as a new opportunity,” Mirwald said when asked to look back on the trade to Vancouver. “I knew I’d come in here and have to earn a spot and I knew who [starter] Jesper [Vikman] was last year and I knew this was his team, but I wanted to come here and push him and fight for more starts and I think I did that.”
Push him he did, as Mirwald recorded a .910 save percentage in 26 appearances, while Vikman had a .903 in 45 games.
“You could make the argument that last year, even thought he didn’t play nearly as much, he was as good as Jesper was, our starter,” Giants Goaltending Coach Paul Fricker said in a post-game interview on February 24.
This year, Mirwald took his game to new heights.
Not only did he play a lot, leading the entire WHL in minutes played (3190), but he made the most saves (1723), was tied for third in wins (29) and tied for third in save percentage (.913). According to SportLogiq, Mirwald was first in the WHL in Goals Saved Above Expected (GSAA) in the regular season with 37.3, well above the second-ranked Harrison Meneghin of Lethbridge (26.9). This GSAA number essentially means if an average WHL goaltender were in net instead of Mirwald, the Giants would have allowed 37 more goals against over the course of the season, given the shot quality and quantity they allowed.
And that doesn’t even include the 2024 playoffs, where he stopped an average of 43.8 shots per game, making a total of 219 saves over five games.
“He kept us in games sometimes when we never had a chance to win,” Giants Head Coach Manny Viveiros said. “You knew you were always going to get a solid game from him every single night, so he gave us a chance every day to win here. But the work ethic that he put in into his game and improvements that he made from the year before, you can see why he had so much success.”
While Fricker believes Mirwald’s incredible season “has nothing to do with him,” it’s clear the relationship between the two over the last two seasons was something special.
“I can’t really say enough about Paul. He’s awesome,” Mirwald said of the Giants 12-year Goaltending Coach. “He lets me kind of do my own thing, as in it’s not his way or the highway. We have open discussions. So I might read a play differently than him and it’s not ‘well he read it like this, so this is how it happened’. He always listens to how me or [Matthew] Hutchison saw the game. And he’ll always kind of take the person who’s living it as the best advice.
“He also keeps it light and it’s not always so serious and we have lots of fun. So he’s been he’s been incredible for my career….we’ve built quite a relationship and and I look forward to being in contact and working with him for a long time. He’s meant everything. I owe a lot to him.”
Fricker said he is obviously proud of how Mirwald’s game has grown.
“This has nothing to do with anybody other than him. Here is someone who is a focused individual who has just decided that he can do this and he’s going about doing it. The ‘this’ is he wants to be a pro and he’s going to try to do everything he can,” Fricker said. “I don’t know how much more you can do. Am I proud? Of course I am. But I think he and his parents and all the people that have helped him get to this point, including the Giants, should be proud.”
In Mirwald’s first ever WHL appearance back in the bubble in 2021, he said he tried to ‘just get in there and stop the puck,’ which aligns well with Fricker’s base philosophy.
“I work on a very simple premise: stop the puck,” Fricker said. “I have a running joke with my goalies and I’ve had it for 40 years. I take a puck out at practice and I take my stick and I pull the puck in the net across the goal line and I look at them and I go ‘bad,’ and then I take the puck and I pull it out in front of the goal line and I go ‘good’…the goalie’s job is to stop the puck. If you can just focus on that and calm down and not get all bent out of shape about traffic, or tips, or whatever the case may be, and free yourself up just to play, I think that’s what you’re seeing with [Mirwald].”
When asked what advice Mirwald would have for his rookie self, he said to ‘keep sticking with it,’ which isn’t surprising given how hard he had to work to get a chance in the league.
“Obviously there’s going to be ups and downs and things don’t go your way, but if you stick with it, you’ll get rewarded,” Mirwald said. “For me, [this year] was rewarding, but not in the sense of success. I think it’s rewarding for me in the sense that hard work has paid off and obviously, being 20, being a starter at 20 is a little late, but I always felt like I could do this and now it just feels rewarding that that I was finally given the opportunity to show myself and that I was able to do it.
“So less about wins or the team or the awards, it’s more just feeling rewarded on the hard work.”
It’s that kind of work ethic that Giants General Manager Barclay Parneta says comes to mind when asked about Mirwald’s impact.
“Mirwald having the season he had spoke volumes about perseverance and dedication,” Parneta said. “He really worked through everything. He really dedicated himself to this team. He gave everything he had.”
And fellow 20-year-olds Logen Hammett and Wyatt Wilson also know how much Mirwald meant to the team this season.
“He put the team on his back this year,” Hammett said. “A lot of nights we don’t win unless he’s playing his best and he’s played his best a lot this year. So definitely reliable.”
“He was a rock back there,” Wilson added. “A lot of times he bailed the team out, and not only the team, but me out a couple of times. So was awesome this year and we are super, super grateful for him and everything he’s done for us.”
Getting an opportunity with a pro team is still an unknown at this point, but one has to think it’s something that will happen soon, especially if he is indeed named WHL Goaltender of the Year in early May, when the league announces the annual award winners.
Given the year he had and the path he took to get here, there’s few that would be more deserving of a shot at professional hockey.