‘This year is going to be different:’ Pats have high hopes for ’22-23 season

Cole Dubinsky has a bold prediction about the 2022-23 Regina Pats.

“This year is going to be different,” the veteran forward said. “We’ve had a lot of years here of a little bit of struggling, and the fans and everybody has stuck by us. But this year is going to be different.”

Regina is to open the 2022-23 WHL regular season Friday against the visiting Moose Jaw Warriors. Game time at the Brandt Centre is 7 p.m.

The Pats finished the 2021-22 season with a 27-36-3-2 record, leaving them in ninth place in the Eastern Conference. Only the top eight teams made the playoffs.

In fact, the Pats haven’t made the post-season since 2018, when they were eliminated in the first round. They missed the playoffs in 2019 and ’22, COVID forced the cancellations of the 2020 post-season, and there weren’t any playoffs during the abbreviated 2021 season.

Like Dubinsky, Connor Bedard has high hopes for the 2022-23 Pats.

“We’re just so excited to go to war with each other every night,” Bedard said. “I really see us having a lot of success this year and really changing the tide of the last few years.”

Bedard again will be the centrepiece for the Pats.

The 17-year-old is coming off a season in which he was named the East Division’s player of the year after becoming the youngest player in WHL history to score 50 goals in a season.

He set team records for goals in a season by a 16-year-old (51) and points in a season by a 16-year-old (100).

“I don’t think I’ve met a kid who’s more determined and works harder than him at his craft,” Pats assistant coach Brad Herauf said. “He treats it like he’s a 25-year-old kid in medical school right now trying to pass. He’s fully engaged every day in the whole process of getting better.

“He’s 17 years old, so he’s learning to use his voice and learning to push his peers. But he pushes his peers every day just by the way he goes about his business. He’s 17 years old acting like he’s a professional hockey player right now.”

Not surprisingly, Bedard was named the Pats’ captain Thursday.

There are rumblings around the WHL that Regina head coach-general manager John Paddock will try to load up to give Bedard a shot at the post-season in what likely will be his final WHL season. Bedard is widely considered the No. 1 prospect for the 2023 NHL draft.

“We’re open for business to improve our team,” Paddock told reporters Thursday. “I’m not sure where that goes because I think I’ve looked at it as we’ve always been open for business.”

Bedard will get help offensively from Tanner Howe, who had 27 goals and 42 assists as a 16-year-old last season. He finished second on the team to Bedard in scoring last season.

“Obviously with the numbers they put up last year and the chemistry they built with one another, if they can come close to those numbers that they had last year, that’s going to be a huge bonus for our team,” Herauf said.

“But the biggest thing for them is we’ve got to realize they’re 17 years old and we’ve got to do this by committee. We can’t rely on them to do all the scoring or making sure our team wins. We need a team effort from our goalies to our defencemen and all 12 forwards.”

The Pats lost veterans like Logan Nijhoff and Ryker Evans to graduation after the 2021-22 season, so Herauf is looking for leadership from older returnees like Dubinsky and Braxton Whitehead and growth from younger players such as Layton Feist, Kolten Bridgeman and twins Jaxsin and Corbin Vaughan.

“They’re going to be a load of fun to watch,” Herauf said of the brothers. “As much as Connor’s fun to watch, there’s going to be some old-school hockey fans who are going to love to watch these guys too.”

The Pats added 20-year-old Koen MacInnes to their goaltending corps in the off-season — he joined Drew Sim and Matthew Kieper — as the team looks to improve between the pipes.

What the Pats might do to their lineup before the end of the season isn’t Herauf’s concern as the first game looms.

“I’m just worried about the 25 guys that are in front of me and just trying to coach those guys,” he said. “The wins, the losses, the injuries — all those things will play out the process and what happens here and what decisions John decides to make and what direction we go.

“Right now, we’re just focused on winning hockey games and putting a good product on for our fans.”