Wild Find Successes Amid Second Western Hockey League Season
WENATCHEE, Wash. – Playoffs or not, the Wenatchee Wild achieved some of their most important goals this past season.
Be competitive on the ice and stay in the mix for a Western Hockey League postseason berth? Check. Keep stocking the draft cupboard left bare after the move from Winnipeg, Manitoba two years ago? That one too. Have rising young players in important positions in the lineup and see significant progress from those players by year’s end? Another box ticked.
The Wild earned 23 wins during the 2024-25 season and remained in the Western Conference playoff hunt into the final week of the regular season, while battling a Seattle Thunderbirds team that charged up the standings with 18 wins after the WHL trade deadline, including six wins in their final eight games.
Against the best in the West, Wenatchee did about as well as anybody else – the Wild were one of eight Western Conference teams to snag multiple wins against the Everett Silvertips, the league’s Scotty Munro Memorial Cup regular-season champions. The final score throughout the season rarely told the tale on its own – of Wenatchee’s 20 losses in two- or three-goal games, 14 featured an empty-net goal in the closing minutes that stretched the final margin.
Even in the losses, the Wild often found ways to squeeze an extra point into the standings – the club’s nine losses in overtime and shootouts were exceeded only by the Victoria Royals, who used their 11 bonus points to help push past the Prince George Cougars for a B.C. Division championship. From February 8 to March 1, the Wild failed to pick up a point in the standings only twice over a nine-game stretch, their longest such run of the year.
“We’re all disappointed that we didn’t make the playoffs, but many people outside of our organization didn’t give us a snowball’s chance to make the playoffs,” said Wild general manager Bliss Littler. “We hung in there until the last two games, so I give our players and coaches a bunch of credit for that. Our compete level was good. We had a lot of moving parts this year, and a lot of moving players that came in and some that left. That’s always tough for the coaching staff and the players.”
The Wild got off to a high-flying start in their season opener, as Wenatchee racked up a 7-1 win over that Seattle club on Saturday, September 21. Luka Shcherbyna got the scoring started for the Wild, and Maddix McCagherty highlighted the night with his first WHL hat trick. Veteran goaltender Daniel Hauser earned the win behind 18 saves.
Wenatchee found additional traction in November, with five wins and points in two others. Back-to-back wins during the month also saw back-to-back milestones achieved, as Hauser made 30 saves on November 17 to beat the Kamloops Blazers and earn his 100th WHL victory. He became only the 19th player in league history to accomplish that feat, while head coach Don Nachbaur joined an even more exclusive fraternity three days later with his 700th career coaching victory in a 5-4 win at the Kelowna Rockets. That game made him only the third coach to reach the 700-win plateau in his WHL career, and put him within 50 victories of the league record.
“He’s a teacher, and he’s been successful every place he’s ever been,” said Littler. “One GM told me, ‘I don’t know that I can win another championship with Don Nachbaur as our head coach’ and he’s telling me he’s the best coach he’s ever had. He gets a team that should have a lottery pick and he turns them into a team that’s seventh or eighth in the league. Don gets the most out of whatever you give him. He develops it, but Don is also all about character. He’s all about discipline and creating good young men on and off the ice.”
The roster went through a pair of small but significant remakes during the course of the season, beginning in early November, as the NCAA reversed a decades-long policy by granting Division I eligibility to Canadian Hockey League players. With those doors open, the Wild added several NCAA-committed players, including former Wenatchee defenseman Lukas McCloskey, who had played for the Wild two years before as a 17-year-old in the British Columbia Hockey League.
“(The WHL) is the preferred destination for the college coaches,” said Littler. “They want their kids out here – they’re seeing how good the Western Hockey League is.”
Wenatchee also made several moves at the WHL trade deadline, shuttling Hauser to the Calgary Hitmen and second-year Japanese standout Kenta Isogai to the Victoria Royals. In the process, the Wild continued their task of restocking their slate of draft picks, which previous ownership in Winnipeg had cast away in order to make a run at league titles in 2022 and 2023.
“The Winnipeg ICE did a great job moving picks and prospects for an amazing team for a couple of years, and right now we’re paying the price for that,” said Littler. “We got a house that’s on fire, but we’re rebuilding it and it’s in the best neighborhood in junior hockey, the Western Hockey League. For us, it’s just a matter of time. Now we can see that our 2009 group is a pretty good group – we got to see Boston Tait, we got to see some of our ’09s that we’re pretty excited about. We know that next year we’ll definitely be a younger group, but that younger group is going to get to grow together.”
Two key acquisitions for the Wild just ahead of the trade deadline saw significant time on the ice in the season’s second half, as Alex Garrett joined the team from the Brandon Wheat Kings to provide support for Brendan Gee in net, and Tye Spencer filled a key 20-year-old role after joining the team from the Regina Pats.
Wenatchee’s second-half group continued to keep the team in the playoff race, including a critical overtime win January 24 against the Silvertips. That group would also seal a 5-3 win in the season series against the Tri-City Americans, and even with the playoffs out of reach, briefly extend the season anyway with an overtime contest against Everett in the season finale on March 22.
“I can’t complain about how hard our players competed,” said Littler. “We were right in it, and nobody was really thinking before Christmas that Seattle was going to go on the run that they went on. They’ve done a nice job, and it was good enough to surpass us. I’ve been happy with our coaching staff and our players – I think they’ve given all that they can give, and there will be players who come back next year who are acclimated to know what the coaching staff expects.”
Two 20-year-old players departed the Wild when their junior careers wrapped up last month. Captain and fourth-year Wenatchee and Winnipeg forward Evan Friesen earned an ECHL contract after leading the Wild in scoring with 32 goals, 29 assists and 61 points – all three of those marks were career highs. He was a mainstay on the ice for the organization all four years, appearing in 240 WHL games with 75 goals and 71 assists over those four years. Friesen’s performance at the New Year’s holiday was a true next-level performance, though, earning the WHL’s Tempo Player of the Week award with 10 points over four games, including a four-goal, five-point game January 5 at the Tri-City Americans.
Spencer announced an NCAA Division I commitment to the University of Alaska-Anchorage last week, after a stellar five-year WHL career that saw him appear in 244 games and notch 121 points, including 58 goals. He spent the bulk of his junior career with the Regina Pats, earning a spot among the organization’s leadership group as an alternate captain prior to his acquisition by the Wild.
18-year-old forward Miles Cooper and 19-year-old defenseman Reid Andresen both took on leadership roles this past season as well – Cooper closed his season with 59 points, good for second on the team, while Andresen led the club’s blueliners in scoring with 51 points following an offseason trade from the Medicine Hat Tigers. Both reached the 100-point plateau for their WHL careers this past season, and Andresen also tacked on a late-season Division I commitment to Michigan Tech University.
Forward Shaun Rios turned a few heads of his own during the 2024-25 campaign, his first in junior hockey after an outstanding run at Shattuck-St. Mary’s Prep School in Faribault, Minnesota. He piled up 50 points in 51 games, with 47 of those points coming after a November trade from the Tri-City Americans. He became one of the team’s most consistent scorers over the course of the year as well, as the only Wild player with three different point streaks of at least five games during the season.
In all, the Wild compiled a laundry list of players who stepped up their games in big ways this season – Shcherbyna ended his season with 49 points, more than doubling his prior career high, and tied an organization record with a four-goal performance at the Moose Jaw Warriors on February 4. Dawson Seitz obliterated his previous career-best as well, registering 32 points, including 17 goals. McCloskey and Brendan Dunphy each made successful transitions to the WHL after stints in the BCHL, with 24 and 22 points respectively. Forward Caelan Joudrey found some scoring success of his own as a 16-year-old with 16 points.
Gee made an impression once again in his second WHL season, leading the group with 11 wins in a Wild uniform. After recovering from injuries in the early portion of the season and spending a brief rehab assignment in the Kootenay International Junior Hockey League with the Osoyoos Coyotes, Gee charged back into the league with a perfect 23-save relief performance in a December 28 win against the Spokane Chiefs, and won three of his first four decisions in his return to the league.
Nachbaur himself will go into 2025-26 within sight of a historic achievement, sitting at 715 WHL victories – 36 more wins will send him past current Kamloops Blazers associate coach Don Hay to stand alone as the circuit’s winningest head coach as the league prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary season in 2025-26.
The effort from this year’s Wild team was matched easily by the enthusiasm of Wenatchee Valley hockey fans – 3,045 fans a night stepped through the Town Toyota Center doors, giving the team its highest per-game attendance since 2011 and its second straight year with more than 100,000 fans in the “Wolves’ Den.” Wenatchee’s 2024-25 finale drew a season-high 4,040 fans, and the team’s annual Guns & Hoses promotion on January 11 was tantalizingly close at 3,999 fans.
With the WHL’s Prospects Draft and U.S. Priority Draft just weeks away, the Wild are already gearing up to make good use of their newly-acquired draft picks – after stepping into the league last season without a pick in the first two rounds of the 2025 draft and only two out of the first six rounds, Wenatchee now holds five picks during the first three rounds of this year’s Prospects Draft. The Wild will also get the chance to refill both of their import slots in this summer’s Canadian Hockey League Import Draft.
The end of this season means the team now turns its attention to 2025-26, with season tickets currently on sale. Updated news and information on Wild hockey are always available at www.wenatcheewildhockey.com and on the team’s social media platforms on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
