How the Seattle Thunderbirds built one of the best junior hockey teams ever

by Darren Brown | Jun 19, 2023 | WHL

The Seattle Thunderbirds raised eye brows all across the hockey world this season when they acquired star player after star player, making no bones about the fact they were all in to win a WHL championship and—perhaps—a Memorial Cup as the best team in the entire CHL. 

To the surprise of nobody, the T-Birds rolled through the WHL Playoffs before coming up just one game short of major junior hockey’s ultimate prize; the Quebec Remparts got that glory, beating Seattle 5-0 in the Memorial Cup Final. Still, the 2022-23 Thunderbirds will go down in history as one of the best junior hockey teams ever assembled.

“We’ve had really special groups of people in the past, and this was a special group of people too,” said Thunderbirds general manager Bil La Forge. “But I think that talent level on the ice every night was beyond anything I’ve seen in my years in this league.” 

“Special” is an understatement. By the end of the season, La Forge had constructed a roster that featured 10 players who had already been drafted by NHL teams, including a whopping five players that had been selected in the first round of the NHL Entry Draft. The team went 54-11-3 in the regular season, then cruised through the playoffs, losing just three games en route to hoisting the Ed Chynoweth Cup.

How did the Thunderbirds go about building such an exceptional roster? Sound Of Hockey spoke with La Forge to find out.

A powerhouse five years in the making

La Forge and his staff begin planning their depth charts five years in advance. With the ages of players in the WHL ranging from 16 to 20, and a limit of three 20-year-old players on each team, the proverbial prime of a junior hockey player’s career comes when he hits age 19. So when Seattle is able to draft a group of talented, young players that are all going to turn 19 in the same season, La Forge knows that core of players could have a chance to make a run at a championship.

La Forge saw early in their WHL careers that 2003-born forwards like Lucas Ciona, Reid Schaefer, Sam Popowich, and Mekai Sanders, plus defenseman Jeremy Hanzel and goalie Thomas Milic, had potential as a group to grow into a winner. 

“I think you really start to target a group when you see them enter their 16-year-old season,” said La Forge. “We thought that was a really impressive draft, and that was something that we could build off of going forward and target that team to be a championship team when they were 19.”

Success can’t just come from one age group, though, so to build a strong foundation, a team needs to find success in the WHL Bantam Draft multiple years in a row. La Forge’s scouting staff did just that by layering in ’04-born players like Jordan Gustafson, Nico Myatovic, and Kevin Korchinski to support that class of ’03-born players. 

La Forge’s early assessment of the ’03 group bore out during their 18-year-old seasons. In 2021-22, the Thunderbirds rolled all the way to the WHL Championship Series before losing to the Edmonton Oil Kings, who were led by Dylan Guenther and Luke Prokop.

“I think last year was probably a year earlier than most expected,” said La Forge. “We were confident in our group, but it’s tough to win in this league with a group of 18-year-olds.”

Making such a deep playoff run at that stage proved to La Forge that the time was nigh to go all in for 2022-23.

All the pieces “fall into place”

The series loss to Edmonton in 2021-22 also taught La Forge a valuable lesson about what his club had and what it needed to get over the hump. He saw the Oil Kings rolling out three lines of players that could theoretically play on a top line in the WHL, and he didn’t think the Thunderbirds quite had that kind of depth. 

So, in 2022-23, he set out to add star power to the top of his lineup, both on offense and defense, through a series of low-risk, potentially high-reward trades. He targeted a trio of players that had already moved on to the pro ranks but still had WHL eligibility in Prokop, Guenther, and Brad Lambert, hoping at least one or two of the three might get sent back to juniors. 

Being that there was a real possibility the players would never play for the Thunderbirds, La Forge was able to swing conditional deals. For example, on the Guenther trade, Seattle sent the rights to 2007-born forward Koji Gibson and a fourth-round pick in the 2024 bantam draft regardless of if Guenther got sent back by the Arizona Coyotes. Once he did get sent back, then Edmonton received six additional draft picks spread over the next four seasons. 

Lo and behold, all three players ended up with the Thunderbirds before the end of the season. 

“We felt that in those deals, we got maybe a better price point than we would have, had those guys already been in the league,” said La Forge. “I think a lot of things had to fall into place for us, and they did, so that was really exciting.”

During the season, La Forge also swung trades for forward Colton Dach, who had gotten injured in the World Junior Championship but was expected to return before the end of the season, and star defenseman Nolan Allan. After all these deals had been done, La Forge knew his group—which now featured 10 forwards that could play in the top six—had perhaps even more depth than what he had seen from Edmonton the year prior. 

“With Lambert, Guenther and Dach, we brought in an entire top line,” said La Forge. “And they didn’t play together, but they were three guys that were first-line players.”

Pro-caliber players join the mix

Lambert and his blazing speed came to the T-Birds after turning heads at Winnipeg Jets training camp and playing 14 games with the Manitoba Moose of the AHL. Prokop—one of the keys to Edmonton’s success in 2021-22—had played for the ECHL’s Norfolk Admirals to start the season. 

The jewel in the crown, though, was Guenther. The No. 9 overall pick by the Arizona Coyotes in 2021 racked up 91 points in 59 games for the Oil Kings last season, then made Arizona’s NHL roster out of training camp. 

La Forge had his eye on Guenther at the beginning of the season, in case any indicators popped up that he might be headed back to the WHL. It is common for star WHL players to play nine games in the NHL, then get sent back before a team burns the first year of the player’s entry-level contract. Guenther was proving he belonged in the NHL, though, so the Coyotes kept him around. 

But there is a second 40-game marker that accelerates a player’s path to unrestricted free agency. La Forge had no firsthand knowledge of what the plan was with Guenther, but he had heard rumblings that maybe the Coyotes didn’t want to hit that 40-game threshold. So he pulled the trigger on the conditional deal with the Oil Kings, just in case. Sure enough, after 39 games and 15 points in the NHL, Guenther joined the Thunderbirds, primed to make a run at the Memorial Cup. 

WHL Champions, one game short of the Memorial Cup

The end of the junior hockey season is always interesting. Teams battle through four rounds of playoffs within their own league, and then the winners go on to a rapid-fire round-robin tournament to try to earn the title for all of Canada. Winning the WHL then coming up one game short of the Memorial Cup leaves a bittersweet taste. 

“Obviously, we wanted to get one more win,” said La Forge. “That’s the goal at the start of every year is to win the Memorial Cup, but to get there, you have to accomplish all the things we did in advance of that. So I’m still really proud of everything we accomplished, but there’s still one more piece we want to go get eventually.” 

While La Forge is proud of the many achievements, he isn’t satisfied with the work his club did this season. He said after they lost the final game to Quebec on a Sunday, he and his staff went back to work planning for the future that Monday. 

The Thunderbirds will lose a lot of outstanding players before next season, as Prokop, Guenther, Allan, Dach, Milic, Ciona, Jared Davidson, Kyle Crnkovic, and others will all move on to the next stages of their respective careers. But that’s junior hockey. It’s a developmental league that continues to cycle players through to help them get to the next level. 

La Forge still has confidence that his team can be competitive next season, with players like Korchinski, Gustafson, Gracyn Sawchyn, and Scott Ratzlaff returning. He also has high hopes for up-and-comers like Coster Dunn and Simon Lovsin.

“They’re going to be the next group that carries us,” La Forge said. 

Darren Brown

Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at soundofhockey.com and the host of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is a member of the PHWA and is also usually SOH’s Twitter intern (but please pretend you don’t know that). Follow him @DarrenFunBrown and @sound_hockey or email darren@soundofhockey.com.

Read more from Darren

The rich get richer – Winnipeg Jets send first-round pick Brad Lambert to Seattle Thunderbirds

by Andy Eide | Jan 10, 2023 | WHL

While the Kraken sent their top prospect to the OHL for more development, the Winnipeg Jets sent a top prospect to Seattle. The Seattle Thunderbirds announced Monday that Jets first-round pick in the 2022 NHL Draft, Brad Lambert, had been assigned to play in Seattle for the remainder of the Western Hockey League season.

“We’re just excited to have a guy like Brad join our group,” Thunderbirds general manager Bil La Forge said. “We think he’s gonna fit in really well and adds more depth to our lineup.”

Drafted with the 30th pick overall, Lambert, 19, had just completed his third stint at the World Junior Championship with his native Finland. He scored one goal in five games at this year’s tournament. After an impressive training camp, the Jets sent him to the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League where he’s played in 14 games and has two goals and an assist.

“He’s an elite skater, he’s an offensive player,” La Forge said. “He’s been playing with men for a long time. So, we want him to come, join a strong group, enjoy some success, and have some fun.”

Unable to get consistent playing time as a rookie in pro hockey, the Jets have decided that more time in juniors is the best route for the 6-foot-1, 175-pound forward.

The Thunderbirds acquired the rights to Lambert in late June in a trade with the Saskatoon Blades who had selected Lambert in the CHL Import Draft. The Blades received four WHL Draft picks including a conditional 2023 first-round and 2024 second-round pick.

“We talked to Saskatoon really quickly. It was the morning before the day of the draft and found that it was a possibility,” La Forge said. “Brad’s a guy that we’ve watched for years, before the import draft, and had discussions with and felt like we could be a good fit for him if Winnipeg did decide to send him back. But in all honesty, I was hoping for the best for him and that he would end up where they wanted him to, and I think that coming to a good team in a great place to play is what was exciting for them.”

Those conditional picks are now real picks, but the Thunderbirds are more than willing to pay.

Lambert joins a Thunderbirds team looking to make a second consecutive playoff run to the league championship. Seattle reached the league finals last season, losing in six games to the Edmonton Oil Kings. This season they are ranked No. 1 in the entire Canadian Hockey League and have started 28-5-1-1. They are in first place of the U.S. Division.

Seattle leads the entire league in goals scored and is now adding another offensive weapon. Where he’ll play in the lineup is still to be determined.

“That’s up to the coaches, and I’m sure it’ll take probably a couple of weeks to find the right chemistry and the right mix with our forward group,” La Forge said. “We’re fortunate that we’re so deep right now… definitely we see him as a top-line player, but we feel that we have three top lines too so it’ll be wherever he has chemistry and feels comfortable and can help the team the most.”

This move will give the Thunderbirds four NHL first-round picks on the roster, and Lambert will join defensemen Kevin Korchinski and Nolan Allan, as well as forward Reid Schaefer.

Lambert comes to Seattle days after it pulled off a separate deal to land Chicago Blackhawks second-round pick in 2021 Colton Dach from the Kelowna Rockets. With the WHL Trade Deadline coming on Tuesday, the arms race has been heating up.

The Kamloops Blazers and Everett Silvertips swung a massive deal that included four first-round picks going to Everett for a package that included Anaheim Ducks prospect Olen Zellweger. Along with Lambert, the Jets also reassigned forward Chaz Lucius to the Portland Winterhawks. Portland and Seattle are locked in a battle for the top spot in the U.S. Division and appear destined for a second straight playoff battle after the two bitter rivals played to seven games in the second round last spring.

Seattle plays at the Brandon Wheat Kings Tuesday and ironically will be in Winnipeg to play the ICE on Wednesday. La Forge thinks it is likely Lambert will debut with the Thunderbirds on Saturday when the team plays at the Prince Albert Raiders. Lambert’s first home game will be at the accesso ShoWare Center in Kent on Jan. 20 against the Lethbridge Hurricanes.

With all the moves that Seattle has made, the pressure to win has never been higher.

“I think that our group has high expectations,” La Forge said. “Prior to the moves, it’s just me trying to give them the tools to make sure they have everything they need… there’s a lot of good teams and there’s only one banner so we’re gonna fight to be the last one standing.”

Thunderbirds lose Game 3 4-0, Sebastian Cossa earns fourth playoff shutout

by Andy Eide | Jun 7, 2022 | WHL

KENT – In front of a sold-out accesso ShoWare Center, Edmonton Oil Kings goalie Sebastian Cossa tamed the crowd and made 21 saves in a 4-0 win against the Seattle Thunderbirds to take a 2-1 series lead in the WHL Championship Series.

Former Thunderbird defenseman Simon Kubicek had a goal and an assist in his first game back in Kent since being traded in June of 2021. It was the fourth post-season shutout for Cossa, and the Oil Kings also had goals from Kaiden Guhle and Jakub Demek.

“We played well for 60 minutes,” Oil Kings coach Brad Lauer said. “I thought we did the things we needed to do, made the changes that we needed to make at the start of the game, and I thought our guys really did a good job of executing.”

Thomas Milic made 33 saves, and the Thunderbirds lost a second game in a row and find themselves behind for the first time in the series. Seattle will host Game 4 at the ShoWare Center Wednesday in a near must-win game

“I thought that the first half of the game was good for us and we were doing some good things,” Thunderbirds coach Matt O’Dette said. “It’s pretty tight checking, not a lot of chances either way. I thought the turning point was the goal right after our power play. That was a momentum swing for them, and we sagged a little bit after that and couldn’t mount enough push in the third period.”

The goal in question came at 17:02 in the second period with the game scoreless. Seattle had just missed on a power-play chance when Demek received a pass from Kubicek and streaked behind the Seattle defense to beat Milic with a backhand and made it 1-0.

In a tight-checking game with room and space hard to come by, Edmonton rode the momentum of Demek’s goal along with a stifling forecheck that has given the Thunderbirds fits all series long.

“They’re a good forechecking team,” O’Dette said. “Their D are up in the forecheck. I thought execution wise, we could execute it better and just making clean plays and ticker tape passes. That started to fall off as the game went on.”

Cossa was there for whenever the Thunderbirds were able to work the puck down ice and on the penalty kill. The Thunderbirds ended up 0-for-3 on the power play. It was the fourth shutout of the playoffs and 11th this season for the Detroit Red Wings 2021 first-round NHL Draft Pick.

“Good job by our boys,” Cossa said. “Our defense did a good job of getting pucks quick to our forwards and boxing outside to do the job.”

After the third straight first period where neither club scored, the visitors outshot Seattle 14-8 in the second period and began to tilt the ice.

Demek opened the scoring minutes after Milic made an outstanding save on a two-on-none breakaway attempt. Kubicek scored on a one-timer on the power play at 4:10 of the third period after receiving a cross-ice pass in the left circle.

Kaiden Guhle made it 3-0 at 11:47. He had time and space in the high slot and beat Milic with a wrister. Carter Souch scored on the empty net at 19:19 to complete the 4-0 score.

“We have to flush this game, the turnaround is less than 24 hours,” O’Dette said. “We have no time to feel sorry for ourselves. Regroup, obviously make some adjustments and watch the video. But we’ve been a resilient team all year, and it’s another opportunity to show that again.”

Seattle Thunderbirds have leaned on goalie Thomas Milic to reach WHL Championship Series

by Andy Eide | Jun 3, 2022 | WHL

When the Seattle Thunderbirds drafted goalie Thomas Milic in the second round of the 2018 Western Hockey League Draft they were hoping they had acquired a big-game goalie, the type of player that didn’t wilt or hide from important games. As they prepare to play the Edmonton Oil Kings in the WHL’s Championship Series, they now know that Milic is that big-game goalie they had hoped for.

The 19-year-old showed up and won big games for Seattle during its current playoff run. Down three games to one in the second round against Portland, Milic won three straight, including two wins where he allowed one goal in each game. In the Western Conference Championship Series against Kamloops, he won the last two games in the series, including a 3-2 win in Game 7.

He’s been so good that the WHL named him Goalie of the Month of May.

He’s the first goalie in WHL history to win two Game 7’s on the road and is 5-0 in big elimination games.

“I love playing in those big games,” Milic said Wednesday. “Part of why I love being in the goal is just being able to have so much influence on big games like that. I think I’m a guy who can be relied on no matter what. Whether it’s a busy game with a lot of shots or a low-shot game where we’re dominant, so whatever it is, I’m the guy.”

Milic hasn’t just been the guy in the big games, he’s played well in general.

His first full season in the WHL yielded 27 wins and a .912 save percentage. He’s stepped it up in the playoffs where his save percentage has jumped up to .926, and he’s allowing just over two goals per game.

“Tommy has been awesome, he’s been a rock back there for us,” Thunderbirds team captain Tyrel Bauer said. “He stepped up and made a lot of big plays when we needed it. We’ve had the belief in Tommy all along and there was no question that he was the guy for this job. He’s earned it and the team’s believed in him. There’s no player I’d rather have back there for us right now.”

Milic and the NHL

Milic was not drafted during the 2021 NHL Draft which was his first year of eligibility. He can still be selected in July’s draft but he’s not worried about that just yet, saying all that is for after the season. He was invited to the Seattle Kraken’s first training camp last year as a free agent but could not attend due to an injury.

In the Thunderbirds playoff run, he’s beaten three NHL prospects head-to-head.

Milic says the opposition has been a motivator.

“It’s hard to ignore sometimes, signed NHL guys and guys that have lots of respect around the league and have lots of accolades under their belt,” he said. “But I think all that really does for me is pushes me to play even harder and hopefully come out on top.”

Playing against Edmonton, he’ll face yet another NHL drafted goalie with accolades in the Oil Kings’ Sebastian Cossa, who was a 2021 first-round pick of the Detroit Red Wings. Milic describes his play as fearless and he’ll need to have that mentality again.

Milic is a ‘smaller’ goalie, listed at 6-feet-0, which is the only possible reason that he was passed on during the NHL Draft. His play this year and particularly in the playoffs may help assuage any reservations NHL teams have of selecting him this July.

Thomas Milic versus the Edmonton Oil Kings

Seattle will need more big games out of Milic over the next week if they hope to win the WHL Championship.

The Oil Kings come into the Championship Series with a 12-1 playoff record and are loaded with offensive talent such as Dylan Guenther (Arizona Coyotes) and Jake Neighbours (St. Louis Blues). Milic says he’s had a little bit of pre-scout on Edmonton’s players but doesn’t think the Thunderbirds need to change much.

“Our physical style of play has been really effective against a lot of other high-end talent that we faced,” he says. “I think we’ll just continue with that and just play our game.”

Milic has been good for Seattle on the road this playoffs, and that’s where they’ll open the series on Friday night. The series shifts back home for Tuesday and Wednesday. The accesso ShoWare Center crowd has embraced Milic and often has chanted his name after big saves. While he’s focused on the game, he hears the chants.

“Absolutely I hear it,” he said. “I can’t help but smile and acknowledge all the fans. For me, they’re special.”

Tickets are on sale for Games 3 and 4 here.