The Calgary Hitmen are going through the dog days of January and have a roster riddled with absent and injured players. The club called up one of their top prospects in Bryce Bader to help them through one of the more challenging parts of the season.
Even with icing three affiliated players Wednesday night, the Hitmen still managed a thrilling 4-3 overtime win over the Medicine Hat Tigers at the Scotiabank Saddledome.
The Hitmen’s busiest section of the season has been made more challenging with the World Junior Championships, lingering injuries and untimely illnesses.
Tonight marked the fifth game in a stretch that will see the Hitmen play 11 games in 18 days and their fifth in seven days. By comparison, their first 11 games were played across 29 days.
Forcing the Hitmen’s hand was an upper-body injury to Conner Chaulk and an illness to one of their leading scorers Jake Kryski.
This was not the WHL debut for Bader. He was the Hitmen’s second-round pick, 38th overall during the 2016 WHL Bantam Draft and debuted later that season when he appeared in a 4-2 Hitmen win over the Kootenay Ice Nov. 19, 2016, at Western Finical Place.
Bader had high hopes for this season and worked hard over the summer to try and crack the Hitmen roster. He stuck with the team through training camp, the Young Guns Game and Black versus White Intrasquad Game and appeared in all five preseason games with the Hitmen. In those five appearances, he recorded one goal, one assist, earned a minus-4 rating and took seven shots.
The Sherwood Park product was then reassigned to the Kings of the Alberta Midget Hockey League, but with a purpose.
“(Jeff Chynoweth) told me that I had a good camp and it was a hard decision to send me down, but he told me to go to midget and be the top player in the league,” said Bader. “There’s still things I need to work on like my foot speed and confidence, but getting this first game at the ‘Dome under my belt was a surreal feeling and will only motivate me more moving forward to get back here one day.”
Bader has taken the challenge and ran with it. Through 25 games, he’s already surpassed his point total from last year, with 11 goals and 22 points.
That’s not the only hockey he’s been playing.
He’s also debuted with the local Alberta Junior Hockey League team the Sherwood Park Crusaders.
“We share the same rink as the Crusaders, so we have a great relationship with the club. So when (Bader) was reassigned from Calgary, we thought it would be a great opportunity to get him some experience at the Junior A level while playing regularly with the midget AAA team,” said Kings Head Coach Leo Reagan.
Bader, a lefty, has only filled in for four games with the Crusaders, as they have dealt with their own injuries and illnesses. He has recorded a pair of assists.
“Anytime the we get a player like Bryce with his big body, we like to get him into a few games and see how he does,” said Crusaders Assistant Coach and former Red Deer Rebel Jeff Woywitka. “He skates well, sees the ice well and shoots the puck well. We think he has the tools to be a force at that level eventually.
“We’re really excited to see how this opportunity helps out his development.”
As a 16-year-old, the AJHL can be quite the eye-opener. But according to Bader, it doesn’t compare to life in the WHL.
“The size of the players is the same, but this league is definitely faster, and the speed and skill are out of this world The game is so fast, you need to keep up if you want to have a chance,” said Bader.
The 6-foot-1, 197-pound forward didn’t record a point during his WHL debut last season, and was held in check tonight by a game dominated late by special teams.
“Any time I got the call in the third, one team always took a penalty. There was no chance of me getting on the power play or penalty kill in my first game, so I just sit and watched them, tried to pick up anything I could,” said Bader.
Bader’s first shift took place at the 7:56 mark of the opening period following a failed Hitmen power play, but he really got going on a couple offensive shifts in the second. He made a nice play along the boards to keep the puck in the offensive zone and fired a shot from the slot that he probably wished he put more mustard on.
Hitmen Head Coach Dallas Ferguson was working with his youngest lineup of the season and was often going to the blender to protect his younger players against a team that boasts one of the top 20-year-olds in the league in Mark Rassell. Bader started on the fourth line with 17-year-old Zach Huber and 18-year-old Andrei Grishakov, but that line never fully worked together for the course of the game.
“I thought he looked fine. He only had six-to-seven minutes of ice time tonight. There were a bunch of power plays and penalty kills that he wasn’t ready for that didn’t allow him to get out there,” said Ferguson. “It’s interesting for me to see a player in the exhibition season, then send him back to midget and then when he has a chance to comeback and show us where his game is at and where his development is. Hopefully this experience was good for him to so he can use it as a way of evaluating himself where he is at and what he has to do to continue to be successful.”
Mixing and matching, the Hitmen were able to dump the Tigers in overtime, closing out a eight-game stretch against Central Division opponents with a 3-3-2-0 record. Not a bad record considering the cards they were dealt.
With Jake Bean and Vladislav Yeryomenko still away with their respected junior national teams, along with injuries to Andrew Viggars and Jameson Murray forced the Hitmen to rely on affiliated players Luke Prokop and Devan Klassen. Prokop has now played in eight games with the club and tonight marked the seventh game of Klassen’s career.
Murray returned to the lineup tonight just as the 17-year-old Drea Esposito landed on the WHL injury report with an upper-body injury and is out indefinitely.
Bader’s debut was the first of four games over the course of a very busy weekend for the Hitmen. The Hitmen told Bader and the Kings that they wanted to keep Bader around for all four games and then send him on his way Sunday night.
If the injuries keep piling up the way they have lately and if the season takes a turn for the worse in the closing months, the opportunity for a return trip for Bader might present itself. But until then, the message remains the same; go home and dominate.
