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Thanksgiving weekend was a quiet one for most of the Wenatchee Wild development teams, but the 18U Wolves team kept busy with a visit to Canada, plus a bonus trip north of the border for a few of the team's top players.

For four 18U players, the competition week started on Tuesday with a call-up to the British Columbia Hockey League's Wenatchee Wild and their midweek visit to the Trail Smoke Eaters. A round of illnesses hit the Wild early in the week, forcing five players to remain home sick and miss the trip to Trail. Joe Marranzino and Brayden Pankey played their first junior games, combining for 17 minutes of ice time on defense, while Ayvin Eidsness dressed as a backup to Andy Vlaha. Logan Nagle, with four BCHL games under his belt last year and another this season, was a healthy game-time scratch.

"That's what sets us apart from a lot of other academies," said Wild Development Team hockey director Troy Mick. "They get to practice with the Wild, they get evaluated every day that they're on the ice, and things like this happen. There are injuries or a guy is sick, and it's a spur-of-the-moment thing that they were able to take four of our guys up. That's one thing that we really recruit hard on, is that affiliation agreement with them."

The turnaround time was extremely brief for the quartet after returning to Wenatchee, with an early-morning departure scheduled on Thursday for a Canadian Sport School Hockey League event in Shawnigan Lake, British Columbia. After an early-morning accident with a deer and travel complications in ferrying over to Vancouver Island, the team's Thursday evening game was cancelled.

Upon arriving in Shawnigan Lake, the Wolves took a pair of losses on the weekend, falling 1-0 to the North Shore Warriors U18 team on Friday and 6-4 to Okanagan Hockey Academy's U18 program on Saturday. In the opener, James Hunt made 47 saves, but Rayne Jameson's goal with four seconds left in the second period stood up as the only goal of the game. The latter of the two games saw Okanagan go ahead 4-0 in the first 12 minutes before the Wolves began chipping away. After seeing the lead whittled down to 5-4 six minutes into the third, Stein Dostal notched an empty-net goal with 1:10 to seal the win for OHA.

"In the North Shore game, we just weren't even a close version of ourselves," said Mick. "Hopefully, it'll be a learning component for us that you always have to be your best no matter the circumstances. A lot of those things are out of your control. Our 18s and 16s are looking forward to redeeming themselves this weekend in Vegas."

This weekend marks an especially busy weekend for the Wild Development Team, with all four squads set to make long trips for competition in the western United States. The 18U and 16U teams will compete in the Western Showcase in Las Vegas, while the 14U and 12U groups head to Phoenix for the Western Exposure Showcase.