Darren Steinke
Stanks On Sports
For some legacy followers of WHL teams, the sky is falling.
For some legacy followers of other WHL teams, it is time to make travel plans to attend the Memorial Cup in Rimouski, Quebec, which runs from May 22, 2025 to June 1, 2025.
At this point in the 2024-25 campaign, it is way too early to head out on any of those extremes. Still, some fans do let their passions fly high to the point it feels like they are cheering for a favourite CFL or NFL team. Those leagues have short seasons, and early stumbles are a lot more difficult to recover from on those circuits.
A WHL regular season is 68 games long, which means all teams will go through times when they stumble and times when they are red hot. Over the first couple of weeks of the regular season, games for most WHL teams are spread out with sizable chunks of off time.
The schedule is usually set up like that because most clubs are still getting players cycled back from professional training camps. When players return to WHL clubs, those squads usually have to then assign younger players to under-18 AAA or junior A clubs.
Doing a quick glance over social media lines, it seems like Prince Albert Raiders fans are doing well riding the wave. They realized the Raiders shuffled the deck as the team’s roster goes from how it looked in 2023-24. The Raiders also just got some players back from the NHL ranks in Tomas Mrsic (St. Louis Blues), Lukas Dragicevic (Seattle Kraken) and Norwin Panocha (Buffalo Sabres), and the fans seem to realize there will be an adjustment period.
The Raiders have a 1-2-1 record, but they do have a roster that can be good this year and has potential to be very strong in future seasons thanks to the work general manager Curtis Hunt and his staff put in with drafts and trades. There is also the recognition that hiccups will happen.
If you listened to Swift Current Broncos play-by-play voice and community relations manager Gino De Paoli as he called his club’s home game on Saturday against the visiting Raiders, you could tell the pressure was on. It seemed the folks in “Speedy Creek” weren’t happy with their team’s 0-3 start being outscored 19-7 in the process.
When the Broncos used a four-goal second period to get ahead of the Raiders 5-3 and held off a furious third period push by Prince Albert to cling to a 5-4 victory, it seemed like a big sigh of relief went up in Swift Current. After the Broncos topped the Central Division in 2023-24 with a 40-22-4-2 mark, it is safe to say the folks in Swift Current were optimistic when the Broncos moved over to an East Division this season where the other five clubs were going through various resets. Still, it is way too early to make any declaration of what is going to happen to the Broncos this season.
Out in Lethbridge where the Hurricanes have started 3-1, you can almost hear the refrain “in Peter Anholt we trust” once again. Anholt, who has legendary ties to the Raiders, is viewed as the hero that ended the dark days in Lethbridge upon joining the team in 2014 and taking on the general manager’s role on December 10, 2014.
With how well the Hurricanes have started, the fans there will be making the case Lethbridge should be the WHL team that hosts the Memorial Cup in 2026. While the folks in Lethbridge can rightfully be feeling great about their start, it is still early. Still, it feels like Hurricanes fans will be able to ride rough waves as long as Anholt is with the team.
Out in Medicine Hat, Tigers fans are likely renewing their hatred for the Red Deer Rebels. The Tigers are off to a 1-2 start, and the two losses came this past Friday and Saturday after dropping both ends of a home-and-home series against the Rebels. The Rebels eliminated the Tigers in five games in the 2024 WHL Playoffs.
The rivalry between the Tigers and Rebels took off and has stayed heated with the two sides meeting on a somewhat regular basis in the post-season starting in 2003. When you go to Red Deer, you find out quickly Rebels fans take that rivalry seriously too.
At the moment, the records of both teams will likely be in the back of the minds of both fanbases as a third straight grudge match is coming up on Friday in Red Deer. The two meetings this past Friday and Saturday did have a unique intensity to them.
For the Saskatoon Blades and their 3-0 start, that will likely give the Blades momentum to keep attracting casual fans to the SaskTel Centre. The Blades have seen the rewards of that the past two seasons with their long term ground game of getting in the community and have drawn 12,002 spectators out to their first two home games.
Overall, it is interesting to notice some of the initial trends at the start of a campaign. Still, it is impossible to draw absolute conclusions over a sample size of four games, when there are still 64 games to play.
Whitehead and the wild new NCAA frontier
Regina Pats 20-year-old centre Braxton Whitehead shook up the junior hockey world with his NCAA announcement last month.
On September 13, Whitehead announced he has verbally committed to joining the Arizona State University Sun Devils in the NCAA Division I ranks once his time with the Pats was complete. NCAA bylaws consider the CHL’s three major junior circuits in the WHL, OHL and QMJHL as professional leagues and bars players from those circuits from playing in the NCAA. That has been in place for some time.
A class-action lawsuit was filed on August 13 in U.S. District Court in Buffalo, N.Y., might ultimately change those bylaws.
In recent years, the NCAA landscape has shifted with changes in guidelines with regards to name, image and likeness as well as rules regarding the transfer portal. The current name, image and likeness guideline changes likely make it inevitable that players in the CHL’s major junior ranks will ultimately be eligible to play in the NCAA.
Famed Louisiana State University Tigers women’s gymnastics team member Olivia “Livvy” Dunn has shown how lucrative the new NCAA world can be. A piece run by the New York Post on September 13 reports Dunn, who turned 22-years-old on Tuesday, has made an estimated US$9.5-million since 2021 when NIL guidelines changed.
When you look at that case, it is going to be hard for the NCAA to keep major junior hockey players out on the basis of getting a monthly stipend that has never hit $1,000 a month in Canadian dollars.
Of course, Dunn’s case is likely the best success story about what can be accomplished in the new NCAA landscape. It is doubtful Whitehead will pull in Dunn’s income figures in the NCAA. Still, you can’t argue someone like Dunn can be part of the NCAA and make millions, while Whitehead can not due to receiving a very small monthly stipend in comparison.
You can expect more twists and turns will happen in soap opera like style in the wild new NCAA frontier.
Darren Steinke is a Saskatoon-based freelance sportswriter and photographer with more than 20 years of experience covering the WHL. He blogs frequently at stankssermon.blogspot.com.
