Wild Junior “A” History

On September 12, 2006, ground was broken on a new multipurpose event center that would eventually become home to a new ice hockey team. On February 22, 2008, the North American Hockey League granted Wenatchee Junior Hockey, LLC. with conditional approval for an expansion team. On May 20, 2008, Wenatchee Junior Hockey, LLC. announced the franchise would be the “Wild”, with the name being chosen by a “name-the-team contest” held at local schools. The Wild played their first game at the NAHL Showcase on September 17, 2008, losing to the Motor City Metal Jackets 2-1 in overtime. The home opener saw over 3,600 fans file through the doors, though the visiting team from Topeka prevailed 5-0.

Despite the rough start, the Wild roared back to finish the season strong, making a championship run in that first season, going 35-19-4 and winning the West Division playoff title. The Wild advanced to the Robertson Cup tournament in Mason City, Iowa, but lost a 3-2 overtime decision to the St. Louis Bandits in the championship game. Nic Dowd became the first player in team history to be chosen in the NHL Draft, going to the Los Angeles Kings in the seventh round. 13 players from that inaugural team would go on to earn spots on NCAA Division I rosters – that and an average crowd of 2,714 fans per game helped the team earn the NAHL’s Organization of the Year award in its first year on the ice. Head coach Paul Baxter was also honored as the NAHL’s General Manager of the Year.

The Wild weren’t able to make a return to the championship game in their second season, but added a regular-season NAHL championship to their resume in 2009-10 with a 45-10-3 mark. That far outpaced the field in the NAHL’s West Division and tied the Topeka Roadrunners with 93 points. The season couldn’t have gotten off to a much better start than it did, with the Wild winning their first 10 games and nearly running the table in the month of September. Wenatchee enjoyed a double-whammy in the postseason, hosting the Robertson Cup tournament and then earning their way in anyway by winning the division playoffs.

Brandon Jaeger was far and away the league’s top goaltender, winning 22 games and posting a 1.83 goals-against average. He would join 54-point scorer Jeff Jubinville on the all-league list, while Mac Carruth departed midseason on his way to a 117-win run over three-and-a-half years with the Portland Winterhawks. He was the second Wenatchee player in as many years to be drafted, going to Chicago in the seventh round that summer. Not surprisingly, the Wild were honored again as the league’s Organization of the Year.

Year three in the Wenatchee Valley saw a second-place finish in the West Division for the Wild, earning 34 wins in a newly-expanded West Division that included teams in Dawson Creek, British Columbia and Fresno, California. The Wild opened the season with wins in 10 of their first 13, thanks in part to the work of Brandon Jaeger – he would follow up his Goaltender of the Year season with 25 more wins, a spot on the all-West Division team and a goal on February 19 against Dawson Creek.

Though there weren’t many eye-popping numbers along the way for the Wild, the alumni list was an impressive one, with 17 players from the 2010-11 roster landing in NCAA Division I programs.

The 2011-12 season didn’t lead to a return to the Robertson Cup tournament, but the deadliest goaltending tandem in Wenatchee history comes from this season – the Wild pushed their total up to 36 wins in a 60-game NAHL season, with Robert Nichols posting an unconscious 1.49 goals-against average and 10 shutouts, and Greg Lewis not far behind with a 1.77 goals-against mark. Though the team came out of Black Friday with a pedestrian 9-7-3 record, the Wild heated up the rest of the way, topping out with a stretch of 10 wins in 11 games in February and March.

Though the goaltenders headlined the effort, the offense was nothing to sneer at either – Ben Carey notched a team-high 14 power play goals on the way to a 57-point season, which also led the team. Nichols was well-recognized for his efforts, tying with eventual Vezina Trophy winner Connor Hellebuyck for the league’s Rookie of the Year and Goaltender of the Year awards.

They say that defense wins championships, and it nearly won the Wild a title in 2012-13, as Act I came to a close on Wenatchee’s fastest show on ice. With new head coach and general manager Bliss Littler in charge, the Wild edged Fairbanks for the West Division regular-season crown behind NAHL Defenseman of the Year Josh Hartley and 31 wins from returning co-Goaltender of the Year Robert Nichols. The penalty kill was fatal to other teams’ power play hopes, as the Wild got a team-record four shorthanded goals apiece from Jacob Barber and Jono Davis that season.

After a 39-15-6 finish to the regular season, Nichols was a force in the net again in the playoffs, winning eight games and posting a .928 save percentage to go with a team-record 1.77 goals-against average. It took the maximum 10 games, but Wenatchee earned its third trip to the Robertson Cup tournament, heading to Texas for the final week of the postseason. The only loss of the tournament for Wenatchee came on the season’s final day, a 5-0 defeat against the Amarillo Bulls.

2013 marked a year of transition for the organization – on January 19, 2013, USA Hockey approved the transfer of the Wenatchee Wild from the NAHL to the British Columbia Hockey League (BCHL) for the 2013–14 season. However, on May 14, 2013, the Wild announced they would instead relocate the franchise to Hidalgo, Texas and play as the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees of the NAHL.

However…

…eight days after the curtain fell on the opening act of the team’s history, Act II began.

On May 22, 2013, the Wenatchee City Council approved a deal to allow David and Lisa White to move the Fresno Monsters (NAHL) to Wenatchee and adopt the Wild name and logo. On June 4, 2013, the Whites announced they had retained coach Bliss Littler and the team’s staff from the previous franchise.

The NAHL took on a new look as well – the West Division was eliminated, with the Wild and the two Alaska entries joining the Midwest Division, where the league’s Alaska teams currently reside. Wenatchee closed the year in third place, but enjoyed the services of four of the league’s top 12 rookies on the way to another five-game division final thriller against the Fairbanks Ice Dogs. Two of them – Troy Loggins and Parker Tuomie – led the roster with 53 and 49 points, respectively. Among Tuomie’s exploits that year were 13 power play goals and a triple-overtime winner against the Ice Dogs to close the longest game in team history and force a decisive fifth game in the division final.

Chase Perry earned three of his five postseason wins by shutout, holding opponents to a paltry 1.83 goals a game in the Robertson Cup playoffs, and heard his name called in the fifth round of that year’s NHL Draft, going to the Detroit Red Wings. Former Wild forward Alex Schoenborn barely beat him to the draft board, though, going in the third round to San Jose with the 72nd overall pick.

Wenatchee’s final season in the NAHL brought another realignment, with the Wild joining the South Division for the 2014-15 campaign. Six of the eight teams in the division earned playoff spots, and the Wild claimed the fifth of those spots with a 27-25-8 finish. The season itself went quietly, but spelled big things in store, with four of the team’s eventual 100-point career scorers on the roster. Jake Ahlgren led the way with 45 points – Brendan Harris, who would eventually lead the team in career scoring, was just one point behind.

After a rocky start to the year with Kenai River, Zach Quinn settled in nicely in Wenatchee, posting 16 wins in net with the Wild. A pair of 3-2 wins at Corpus Christi would be the last for Wenatchee in the NAHL, however, with the Lone Star Brahmas claiming three close wins in the South Division semifinals.

On June 1, 2015, Wenatchee’s long-awaited move to the British Columbia Hockey League became official, and the raves were immediate – from the moment the Wild became a BCHL team, fans repeatedly praised the increased level of play and the far more favorable travel situation. Bus trips in the BCHL averaged just over six hours, with many closer to four hours.

The Wild picked up right where they left off in the NAHL the previous year, going 34-16-4-4, with the four ties marking the first such finishes to a game in team history. They got hot just at the right time, too – starting with the final week of January, the team reeled off 13 straight games with at least one point in the standings, including eight consecutive wins. Wenatchee earned its first BCHL playoff series win right away, knocking out the Langley Rivermen four games to one in the team’s first-ever best-of-seven set.

Brendan Harris remained with the team during its transition to the BCHL, leading the team with 56 points in its first season on the new circuit – Chase Perry took care of the lion’s share of the work in net, winning 23 contests. One of the highlights of the season for the Wild actually took place in Minnesota on March 22, as inaugural-season standout Nic Dowd made his NHL debut against the Minnesota Wild, marking the first time that a player who had suited up in Wenatchee advanced to “The Show.”

2016 marked the beginning of perhaps the most memorable two-year stretch in the history of Wenatchee Wild hockey. After finishing the previous season strong, the Wild opened the year on a tear, winning 10 of their first 11 games, and never lost a home game in regulation on their way to a 45-9-4 record. That was more than enough to bring the Ron Boileau Memorial Trophy to Wenatchee, giving the organization its first regular-season league championship in seven years. Unfortunately, the postseason came to a premature end – after dispatching the Prince George Spruce Kings in six games, the Chilliwack Chiefs swept Wenatchee on their way to the Fred Page Cup final.

2016-17 saw a significant shake-up in the team record books, especially on the offensive side, posting an incredible 296 goals. Brendan Harris and Charlie Combs wrapped up their junior careers with 98 and 84 points, respectively, giving them the top two single-season scoring marks in team history. Combs set records of his own with 51 goals that season, 21 of them coming on the power play. Anthony Yamnitsky tied the team record in net with 31 wins.

The awards list was chock full of Wild players as well – Harris was selected as the Vern Dye Memorial Trophy winner as the most valuable player in the BCHL, earned a Brett Hull Trophy as the circuit’s top scorer, and also picked up a Bob Fenton Trophy as the league’s most sportsmanlike player. Bliss Littler also earned the first of his back-to-back Joe Tennant Memorial Trophies as the league’s Coach of the Year.

If Wenatchee’s fifth year on the ice was a season of transition, the 10th anniversary season was one of celebration. The Wild were excellent on the ice again, but not quite at the top of the heap – with a 37-16-1-4 record in the newly-aligned Interior Division, the team entered the Fred Page Cup playoffs with the third-best record in the BCHL. A.J. Vanderbeck had 37 goals to lead the way, tying with Jasper Weatherby for the team-best. In fact, Weatherby had a historic season in his own right with 74 points, the most ever for a 19-year-old Wild skater, and his eight game-winning markers also tied the team’s historic mark. Cooper Zech was as dominant as ever on the blue line, racking up a team-record 58 assists on the way to a 69-point campaign.

In the playoffs, the Wild kept on keeping on – the Merritt Centennials posed little threat in the first round, bowing out in four games. Coming home from a two-game visit to Vernon with a pair of losses, Wenatchee roared back to sweep the final four games of the series and move on to the BCHL semis, where they cruised past the Trail Smoke Eaters in five games. Up three-games-to-none at Prince George in the final, all that a 4-2 loss to the Spruce Kings did was ensure that the Wild would get to win it all in front of their home crowd…which they did, with a 3-0 Game Five shutout.

However, the season wasn’t over – the Wild rolled on to the best-of-seven Doyle Cup for Hockey Canada’s Pacific Region championship. That series pitted them against the Alberta Junior Hockey League champion Spruce Grove Saints, who also exited in five games. The last step for Wenatchee was the Royal Bank Cup, in which the Wild swept all four round-robin games. However, after crushing the Wellington Dukes 7-1 in the final round-robin game, Wenatchee fell 2-1 to the Dukes two days later in the semifinals despite out-shooting their OJHL counterparts 51-14.

The extra-long postseason run saw the Wild wrap up as one of Hockey Canada’s top four Junior A teams, and set some potentially-unbreakable team records along the way. With 30 playoff games under their belts, Weatherby posted an unbelievable 49 postseason points, while Vanderbeck and Zech came up right behind at 36 and 33, respectively. Weatherby’s 21 playoff goals and 28 playoff assists are, unsurprisingly, also both Wild playoff records. Weatherby and Zak Galambos posted new marks on the power play with eight and seven playoff goals on the man-advantage, and Vanderbeck’s five game-winners also remains the high-water playoff mark for the Wild. Austin Park’s record in net truly is unbreakable in the current postseason format – Park earned 19 of Wenatchee’s 24 playoff victories, while a postseason run today would max out at just 16 victories.

The BCHL surprised no one by handing out a ton of hardware to the Wild at year’s end – in addition to a second straight Joe Tennant Memorial Trophy for Bliss Littler, Jasper Weatherby’s 74 points were still enough to lead the league and earn the team its second Brett Hull Trophy. Zech landed the league’s Defensive Award for his play on the blue line, while Weatherby picked up the BCHL’s Vern Dye Memorial Trophy as its most valuable player.

Despite all of that, the story still wasn’t over for the season, as Slava Demin and Weatherby went in the third round of the NHL Draft that summer, just four picks apart. Demin was chosen by the Vegas Golden Knights at #99 overall, while Weatherby went to the San Jose Sharks at #102.

After an outright assault on the team record books in 2017-18, the 11th season on the ice for the Wild was somewhat quieter, though far from forgettable in its own right. Wenatchee finished third in the Interior Division once again, wrapping up with a 32-20-2-4 mark and 70 points in the standings. After sitting at 9-9-2 one game into November, the Wild charged toward Christmas with 13 wins in their next 14 games.

They finished right at .500 over the final 24 games, but appeared ready to make another long postseason run – West Kelowna sneaked into a 3-2 lead in their first-round set before falling by the wayside by a 6-3 final in Game Seven. Cowichan Valley also split the first four games evenly with the Wild in the quarterfinals before overtime goals from Matt Dorsey in Game Five and Chad Sasaki in Game Six knocked the Capitals out of the playoffs. A 26-save shutout for Austin Park closed the month of March on the right note, but was the final highlight for the Wild, as the Vernon Vipers earned a five-game series win in the semifinals. The series loss capped a run of seven consecutive best-of-seven playoff series victories against seven different teams, including the previous year’s Doyle Cup. 14 players from the 2018-19 roster earned NCAA Division I college commitments.

The Wild enjoyed a balanced effort from their skaters throughout the year, with Matt Gosiewski’s 51 points leading the way. He was one of four Wenatchee skaters with at least 40 points on the year and 11 players with at least 30 points. Park finished the regular season with just an .878 save percentage, but rebounded handily in the playoffs with eight wins.

The 2019-20 season saw the Wild wrap up the season with a 30-23-4-1 record, matching the Salmon Arm Silverbacks stride-for-stride for third place in the Interior Division, though the Silverbacks won four of the first five meetings to take the tiebreaker and force Wenatchee into the fourth slot in the division standings. Just like the previous season, the individual marks were balanced if uneventful – Nick Cafarelli led the way with just 40 points, though six other Wild players notched at least 30. Daniel Chenard and Noah Altman each stayed well above the fray in net, with Chenard earning 21 wins and Altman picking up the other nine. The season did see the organization’s first coaching change since 2012 – midway through the 2019-20 season, Head Coach/GM Bliss Littler opted to step down from the bench to attend to personal health concerns, though retaining his position as General Manager.

The Wild made an early playoff exit, dropping out with a five-game first-round loss to the Vernon Vipers, but the first-round finish did help avoid a “what could have been” moment, as the BCHL playoffs fell victim to the worldwide COVID shutdown just one week later. Despite the lockdown, former forward Lucas Svejkovsky picked up a selection by the Pittsburgh Penguins in the fourth round of that summer’s NHL Draft. As the start of the 2020-21 BCHL season fell victim to delays, the ongoing border closure between the United States and Canada forced Wenatchee to suspend play for the season. The BCHL would eventually settle on a 20-game “pod season” for 2020-21 and await the return of the Wild the following autumn.

The Wild made a much-anticipated return to the ice in 2021-22 with a new 10-year contract for general manager Bliss Littler, a new-look group on the ice, and a newly-minted head coach with the removal of Chris Clark’s interim tag. It did take some time for the team to get up to full speed, finishing October still in search of the first win. That first win came off the stick of Cade Stibbe, with a 3-2 overtime win in Vernon to start the month of November. Sitting at 3-10-4-1 after the first week of December, the Wild rocketed to .500 from there, winning eight of their next nine games and adding another four-game winning streak late in the year to finish 22-26-4-1. The seventh-place finish belied what was to come in the first round of the Interior Conference playoffs, as the Wild pushed the second-seeded Salmon Arm Silverbacks to the brink in a seven-game nailbiter. Unfortunately, the Silverbacks had home-ice advantage in a series where the home team won every game, and a 6-3 loss in Game Seven spelled the end of Wenatchee’s season.

The Wild saw outstanding seasons from some of their younger players, as Ean Somoza led the offense with 53 points – Cade Littler was close behind at 45 points, the team’s highest-scoring performance ever by a 17-year-old player. Tyler Shea handled the lion’s share of the work in the cage, picking up 17 of the team’s 22 wins for the season. In the postseason, Quinn Emerson scored seven goals to set a short-lived record for the most goals in one playoff series in team history.

The team began its season with its second NHL debut for an alumnus – Jasper Weatherby scored his first goal for the Sharks in his first NHL game, a game-tying power play goal against the Winnipeg Jets on October 16. The organization capped its season later that summer with Littler’s selection in the NHL Draft, turning 18 years old just in time to hear the Calgary Flames call his name with their seventh-round pick.

With a new two-year contract in hand for head coach Chris Clark and the last of Washington’s statewide COVID restrictions no longer in play, the Wild made their 15th anniversary season the year to “Restore The Roar” at their Town Toyota Center home. They did just that, bringing nearly 70,000 fans through the doors – their largest per-night crowds in five years – to see a team that brought back three of their top four scorers from the previous year. With a significantly younger group on the blue line, though, the results weren’t as evident early in the year. The Wild won just two of their first 12 games before ripping off wins in seven of their first eight games in November. After reaching .500 for the first time in mid-January, they would enjoy a memorable finish to the year with wins in 12 of their last 16 games to finish the year at 28-23-1-2.

A year after leading the team in scoring, Ean Somoza did it again with 74 points, tying for the best season ever by a Wild 19-year-old and setting a new team record with assists in 10 straight games late in the year. A year after setting the Wenatchee record for the best season by a 17-year-old, Cade Littler pounded home a dozen power play goals on the way to a 68-point campaign, the best ever by a Wild 18-year-old.

Even with another seventh-place finish in the Interior Conference standings, the playoff matchup couldn’t have been more favorable, matching up against a second-seeded Cranbrook Bucks group that the Wild had defeated five of seven times in the regular season. Wenatchee won four of six in their first-round playoff series, as Parker Murray terrorized the Bucks defense and goaltender Nathan Airey – his 12 goals shattered the Wild record for a single playoff series, including back-to-back four-goal showings in Games Three and Four. He also scored one in the opening game of the team’s conference semifinal series against the Penticton Vees, but Penticton would put away the Wild in a four-game sweep.