Seattle Thunderbirds forward Conner Roulette and teammates boarded their customized bus Thursday for a six-hour journey north knowing they have their upcoming opponent right where they want it.

Ordinarily, a cross-border trek to British Columbia’s hinterland to face the favored Kamloops Blazers on Friday and Saturday in the Western Hockey League conference final would be daunting for any squad. But these Thunderbirds, a pre-NHL major-junior-level team with players ages 16-20, apparently thrive on sharing bus seats, motel rooms and the spoils of victory away from home.

They posted a franchise-record 21 road wins this season — going 44-18-4-2 overall and finishing third in the U.S. Division — and continued that trend through two playoff rounds, most notably in a just-completed seven-game upset of the Portland Winterhawks.

“Being on the road for us, it’s just another game,” said Roulette, 19, a fourth-round draft pick of the Dallas Stars who finished third in scoring for the Kent-based Thunderbirds with 66 points. “We don’t think of the fans, or the noise that the opposing crowd makes. For us it’s going out and playing our game and sticking to what works for us.”

The Winterhawks had won eight of nine most recent regular-season clashes against the Thunderbirds, swept first-round opponent Prince George and took a commanding 3-1 lead over Seattle the ensuing round. But the T-birds won Game 5 on the road, Game 6 at their ShoWare Center home in Kent, then upended the Winterhawks 6-3 in Portland in Tuesday night’s Game 7.

So a 305-mile bus ride to face a Kamloops team that beat them twice in three tries this season and finished five points better won’t faze them. That lone T-birds victory over the Blazers, incidentally, happened at Kamloops.

“The biggest thing for us is just having such a tight group,” Roulette said. “Everybody seems like best friends, and everybody looks forward to seeing each other every day.”

Whoever prevails in this Western Conference clash faces the Eastern Conference winner between Winnipeg and Edmonton for the WHL championship.

The Thunderbirds weren’t sure how their maturing core would respond after last year’s 23-game, pandemic-abbreviated schedule. It helped that goalie Thomas Milic, 19 and undrafted by NHL teams last year despite playing with Roulette on Canada’s Under-18 gold-medalist squad, posted a 2.44 goals-against average and .912 save percentage over a career-high 47 games. 

They already had a stable defense anchored by captain Ty Bauer — a sixth-round pick of the Winnipeg Jets — and potential 2022 first-rounder Kevin Korchinski. But then the offense got a 42-goal breakout season from third-year center Jared Davidson, 19, who’d never scored more than nine.

Throw in a midseason trade for Pittsburgh Penguins fourth-rounder and proven goal-scorer Lukas Svejkovsky, 20, and the Thunderbirds suddenly had an intriguing playoff outlook.  

Only four Thunderbirds teams had advanced this far in their 44-year history. The most recent was five years ago, when current New York Islanders star Mat Barzal captained the T-birds to their only WHL championship. 

Barzal met with Thunderbirds players in a Climate Pledge Arena suite they were guests in after the Islanders played the Kraken in February. 

“I got to talk to him a bit,” Roulette said. “He gave us some pointers on how it was when he was playing in Seattle and the bond they had between the management, the coaching staff and the players. 

“Obviously it’s great when a Calder (Trophy) winner and NHL superstar is kind of hanging out with the guys and sharing background of what it was like when he was playing. The stories he told showed us we’re kind of in the same spot he was at that age.”

Barzal also captained the Thunderbirds team that lost the WHL title to Brandon in 2016. The 1996-97 team lost the WHL title to Lethbridge, and the 2002-03 squad was defeated in the third round.

Thunderbirds winger Mekai Sanders, 19, a Gig Harbor native and the team’s only Seattle-area player, wasn’t alive when those pre-Barzal squads advanced. But he grew up a T-birds fan watching Barzal’s consecutive finals runs and met him at Climate Pledge. 

“I was standing closest to the doorway when he walked in, so I got to shake his hand and talk to him a little bit,” Sanders said.

Sanders had 12 goals and 15 assists in 56 games before a knee injury sidelined him for the season. But he’s proud of what the team has accomplished on the region’s behalf.

“I remember just looking up to all those Thunderbirds when I was a little kid,” he said. “I was always trying to make games and follow along. They were all role models for me at that age. So now, just being able to be exactly in their shoes and see what they were doing on a day-to-day basis is just an unreal feeling. 

“Unfortunately I can’t play now, but to see all the boys go to battle and just represent Washington and Seattle, it’s awesome.”

The Thunderbirds still have local on-ice representation in Tampa-born forward Svejkovsky, a longtime resident of the remote Washington island border town of Point Roberts. He was acquired in a December trade from Medicine Hat. His father, Jaroslav, was a Tri-City Americans junior standout who played for the Washington Capitals and Tampa Bay Lightning before relocating to Washington.

Svejkovsky, who played youth hockey in British Columbia and a junior season with the Wenatchee Wild, tested positive for COVID-19 immediately after the trade and took a month to join the Thunderbirds. After a tepid start, he erupted for 22 goals in his final 27 contests.

Thunderbirds coach Matt O’Dette said Svejkovsky’s delayed arrival was part of seasonlong adversity that brought his club closer. That included team captain Bauer missing three months because of a knee injury.

“We’ve become used to rolling with the punches,” O’Dette said. “Our players have had to show resiliency at different times throughout the season.”

O’Dette was a Thunderbirds assistant under Steve Konowalchuk on Barzal’s teams and feels their togetherness was similar to that of this squad.

“Whatever variables or factors that we’re up against, it doesn’t really faze us,” he said. “Whatever building we’re playing in, guys are confident facing those challenges. When you have a lot of character on your team, you can have success on the road, and obviously it’s helped us in this playoff run.”

Games 3 and 4 are Tuesday and Wednesday in Kent.

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