Photo: Rob Wallator

By Troy Gillard

de Wit, Hagel, Johnson move on

Rebels say goodbye to graduating trio

Mar 28, 2019 | 10:14 PM

It’s the annual rite of passage in major junior hockey.

Players who toiled during the season as overagers (20-year-olds) bid adieu to junior hockey at season’s end and embark on the next chapter of their lives.

This year, the Red Deer Rebels graduate three players who, outside of goalie Ethan Anders and defenceman Alexander Alexeyev, were their best from start to finish.

Jeff de Wit, Brandon Hagel and Reese Johnson have played their final games in the Western Hockey League. On Thursday, a day after the Rebels bowed out of the playoffs in four straight games to Prince Albert, the trio who made up the team’s top line left the Westerner Park Centrium for the final time as Rebels.

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Each player had an eventful WHL career in their own way.

A hometown Red Deer kid who once served as team stick boy, de Wit was a first round bantam draft pick of the Rebels in 2013 who played two and a half seasons with the team before being traded to Regina, and then Kootenay, and then Victoria before returning to the Rebels as a free agent. de Wit had a solid 27 goals in his final season.

Hagel passed through the bantam draft unselected and was in the AJHL with Whitecourt when the Rebels added him to their roster for the 2015-16 season. He was selected by the Buffalo Sabres in 2016 but went unsigned. But all was not lost as the Morinville native signed with the Chicago Blackhawks in November 2018. In his final season with the Rebels, Hagel posted 102 points, the first Rebels since Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to surpass the century mark, and climbed to second in franchise scoring history.

Johnson struggled through a pair of devastating long-term injuries that caused him to miss half the 2015-16 season and all of 2016-17. But he played the entire 2017-18 season and soon after was tagged by Brent Sutter to be the team’s captain, as his older brother Wyatt once was. He wore the ‘C’ with pride, developed into one of the WHL’s top face-off winners and posted 53 points to also earn a contract with the Blackhawks.

Hagel and Johnson head out Friday morning to begin their pro hockey careers. Both players will report to Chicago’s American Hockey League affiliate in Rockport.

Meantime, de Wit has starting looking at his options for the fall. He has no pro contract, so there’s a strong chance he’ll cash in on his CHL scholarship and attend a Canadian university – he’s already been in contact with several of them.

And while the season as a whole won’t go down as particularly memorable in Rebels history, the efforts of de With, Hagel and Johnson will be appreciated for years to come.