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View Full Version : Milestone for one member of the W'kings



Triton
10-12-2005, 04:14 PM
When the Brandon Wheat Kings take to the ice Wednesday night in Calgary to meet the Hitmen in a rematch of their dramatic seven game Western Hockey League Eastern Conference semi-final series last spring, CKLQ radio play-by-play announcer Bruce Luebke will be “calling the action” for the 1,000th time in his major junior hockey career.

A native of Ogama, Saskatchewan, Luebke broke into the WHL during the 1993-94 campaign when Darren Dreger (Rogers Sportsnet; Hockey Central host) moved from CKLQ to CKX Television. The former “voice” of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League’s Weyburn Red Wings has been doing the Wheat Kings’ play-by-play on CKLQ ever since.

So how did Bruce get to 999 games? As far as anyone can calculate, it looks like this – 836 regular season games, 157 playoff games and eight Memorial Cup contests.

“I always used to make the joke that Bob Cole (Hockey Night in Canada) was sitting in my chair. Now, I’m not sure if I’ll ever move beyond the WHL but I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing,” Luebke says in this week’s edition of the Wheat City Journal. “Having said that, Kelly Moore of CJOB (Winnipeg) did the Kamloops Blazers’ games for over a decade before moving to Winnipeg to do the Jets and then, of course, the Moose so there might still be an opportunity in the future.”

Among his favorite memories behind the mike with Brandon? The two Memorial Cups that the Wheat Kings participated in during the nineties as well as having the opportunity to visit with former players along the way – like former all star defenceman Wade Redden of the Ottawa Senators that Luebke calls the “best player that I’ve ever seen in a Wheat Kings’ uniform”.

The Wheat Kings will be trying to help celebrate Luebke’s historic game tonight when they face off against the unbeaten Hitmen in Calgary. Brandon will be trying to snap a 2-game losing streak after dropping a 9-4 decision to the Rebels in Red Deer on Tuesday.