Thunderbirds undeniably WHL’s best team in 2022-23

The Thunderbirds celebrate a goal in January.

The Seattle Thunderbirds are the WHL’s best team in 2022-23.

They had the best team on paper, and it translated to having the best team on the ice long before they won the Ed Chynoweth Cup. The fact they won the Ed Chynoweth Cup to become WHL champions on Friday just added a final stamp of approval.

Of course, the Kamloops Blazers will still have a chance to cast doubt about whether the Thunderbirds truly are the best in the WHL. The Blazers host the Memorial Cup tournament that determines a CHL champion, and that event will start this coming Friday and runs through to June 4 at the Sandman Centre.

Seattle and Kamloops met in the WHL’s Western Conference Championship Series and the Thunderbirds took that best-of-seven set 4-2. If the Blazers win the Memorial Cup, they will be one of those asterisks CHL champions, because they weren’t able to win their league championship on their way to capturing major junior hockey’s biggest prize.

Still, the reason the Thunderbirds won the WHL championship was due to the fact they had the deepest team on the circuit. That allowed them to beat the Blazers in the Western Conference final for a second straight year before taking out the Winnipeg Ice in the league championship series in five games. The Ice had topped the WHL’s regular season standings in each of the past two seasons.

The seeds of the Thunderbirds run to winning the WHL title in 2022-23 were planted during the 2021-22 campaign. In 2021-22, the Thunderbirds finished seventh overall in the WHL’s regular season standings with a 44-18-4-2 record.

Thomas Milic is the Thunderbirds star netminder.

They advanced to the WHL Championship Series falling in six games to the Edmonton Oil Kings. During that post-season run, the Thunderbirds won six straight contests where they faced elimination from the WHL Playoffs.

After falling in the WHL final in 2021-22, the Thunderbirds went all in for the 2022-23 campaign. The obvious difference between this season and last season has been the load up.

Seattle traded multiple young players, prospects and draft selections in order to add star players that would put them over the top. After falling to the Oil Kings in the 2022 WHL final, the Thunderbirds additions via the trade route included Brad Lambert, Dylan Guenther, Luke Prokop, Nolan Allan, Kyle Crnkovic and Colton Dach.

Guenther and Prokop were key figures in helping the Oil Kings capture the WHL crown in 2021-22. The experience they had added to the experience the Thunderbirds gained in their post-season run in 2022.

Seattle returned 15 players this season who were on the club’s playoff roster in 2022. Included among the key returnees from the 2022 post-season run was netminder Thomas Milic. Milic backstopped Canada to a gold medal finish at world juniors this past January and was named the WHL playoff MVP as the Thunderbirds claimed the Ed Chynoweth Cup this past Friday.

Brad Lambert has scored key goals for the Thunderbirds.

Other key returnees included Jared Davidson, Jordan Gustafson, Reid Schaefer, Lucas Ciona, Kevin Korchinski and Jeremy Hanzel.

The returnees guaranteed the Thunderbirds would have a good shot at a top five finish in the WHL’s overall standings. Seattle also benefited from Nico Myatovic having a breakout year as a returnee and Gracyn Sawchyn putting up a pile of points as a rookie.

Credit has to be given to Thunderbirds general manager Bil La Forge and his scouting staff for knowing who they should add to the core mix of players they already had. La Forge was named the winner of the Lloyd Saunders Memorial Trophy as the WHL executive of the year for 2022-23.

La Forge and his scouting staff knew they couldn’t just add players who could statistically put up points. They looked to add players who where good character guys that could put up points that would be automatically welcomed in by the existing players.

One of the first players the Thunderbirds acquired was Crnkovic from the Saskatoon Blades back on August 30, 2022. During his 19-year-old season with the Blades in 2021-22, Crnkovic was an assistant captain who appeared in all of the team’s 68 regular season games recording 39 goals and 55 assists for 94 points.

Off the ice, Crnkovic was known as one of the Blades best ambassadors in the community. You would be hard pressed to find someone that disliked Crnkovic, and it was pretty safe to assume he would be accepted into the Thunderbirds dressing room.

Jared Davidson is a key member of the Thunderbirds core group.

Lambert, Guenther, Prokop, Allan and Dach are all high character guys too. Dach is a power forward who likes to be an agitator. When he is in your dressing room, you think he is the greatest teammate ever, but when he is an opponent, you wish you could run him over with a semi truck.

Prokop is known as the first WHL and CHL player to come out as gay. As he is signed by the NHL’s Nashville Predators, Prokop also became the first active player with an NHL contract to come out as gay.

After making his coming out announcement on July 19, 2021, you could tell Prokop was more comfortable in his own skin. Since that announcement, he has played the best hockey of his career and continues to steadily improve.

Prokop is arguably one of the best all-around defencemen in the WHL. He can play a physical game, a smart game, put up points or skate for massive minutes to ensure the defensive end is always under control. On top of that, Prokop has been popular with his teammate in every stop he has made in his hockey career.

Lambert and Guenther are talents who are NHL ready right now. Lambert spent the first half of the season with the AHL’s Manitoba Moose, who are an affiliate of the NHL’ Winnipeg Jets. His WHL rights were traded by the Blades to the Thunderbirds, and Jets elected to assign Lambert to a Seattle side projected to make a long post-season run.

Dylan Guenther has won two straight WHL titles.

Guenther spent the first half of the 2022-23 campaign with the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes. After the Oil Kings traded his NHL rights to the Thunderbirds, the Coyotes assigned Guenther to the Seattle said anticipating he would be part of another long playoff run.

During the post-season, both Lambert and Guenther have played with heart skating with the Thunderbirds. They could probably get away with going through the motions, but they have shown they are driven to win championships in the post-season.

Allan focuses on perfecting his craft of being a defensive-defenceman. He has a signed NHL contract with the Chicago Blackhawks and knows he needs to be a good defensive-defenceman to have a long NHL career.

Still, Allan has skill offensively and can play multiple roles on the back end. He was the captain of the Prince Albert Raiders due to his ability to lead by example, and Seattle gave up a tonne of assets making a blockbuster deal with the Raiders on November 16, 2022 to get Allan.

Thunderbirds head coach Matt O’Dette and the coaches on his staff were able to bring this group together creating a team in Seattle that can play any style of hockey you want to play.

Kevin Korchinski is one of Seattle’s star veteran defencemen.

The Thunderbirds topped the Western Conference and finished second overall in the WHL’s regular season standings with a 54-11-1-2 record. The U.S. Division champions were rated fourth in the final CHL Top 10 Rankings. Seattle’s 54 wins and standings points total of 111 points are new regular season club records.

While it is easy to talk about the Thunderbirds headline grabbers that came via the trade route, the career members of the team are still able to shine. That was seen when the Thunderbirds locked up the WHL Championship Series with a 3-1 victory over the Ice in Game 5 this past Friday before a sellout crowd of 6,202 spectators at the Accesso ShoWare Center in Kent, Wash.

Milic, who is a career member of the Thunderbirds and turned 20-years-old in April, made 30 saves to pick up the win in goal in that contest. Seattle’s first two goals came from centre Sam Popowich, who turns 20-years-old on Sunday, at even strength and Myatovic, who is 18-years-old on a penalty shot. Both Popowich and Myatovic have played their entire WHL careers with the Thunderbirds.

Crnkovic sealed the win with an empty-net goal with Guenther picking up an assist on that tally.

Kyle Crnkovic skates with the Ed Chynoweth Cup.

Going into this year’s Memorial Cup, the Thunderbirds are the WHL’s strongest representative at that event since the circuit’s last Memorial Cup winner in the Oil Kings from 2014. The Thunderbirds are stronger than their WHL title winning team from the 2016-17 campaign that featured Mathew Barzal and Ethan Bear as stars.

The Thunderbirds are the best in the WHL. Soon, we will see if they are the best in the entire CHL.

If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

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