The Prince Albert Raiders started the 2025-26 regular season the same way they ended the last one: with a victory over the Saskatoon Blades.
Almost six months to the day after beating the Blades 4-3 to close out the 2024-25 regular season, the two teams were back at the Art Hauser Centre for a 4-2 Raiders win.
“It’s obviously nice to get the first one done with and get the W,” said Raiders forward Ty Meunier, whose early third period goal ended up being the game winner. “I thought (we had) typical first game of the season jitters. We got that out in the first period and I thought we built from there. I really liked all three zones of our play, so we’ll continue that tomorrow.”
Fellow 2023 Prospects Draft selections Riley Boychuk and Jonah Sivertson assisted on Meunier’s winner. The St. Albert, Alta. product said trio continue to gel after a strong pre-season.
“We have a great young core,” Meunier said. “I think we can be huge contributors this season and we proved it tonight. We want to keep building.”
Aiden Oiring, Daxon Rudolph, and Oli Chenier had the other goals for Prince Albert, while Dominik Petr and Zach Olsen replied for Saskatoon. The visitors went up 1-0 midway through the first in front of 3,031 fans at the Art Hauser Centre and had a good chance to extend their lead in the second.
The Raiders were forced to kill of a string of penalties after Rudolph, Oiring, and Harrison Lodewyk were sent off. Despite playing six of the first 10 minutes shorthanded, the Raiders rallied for two second period goals to take a 2-1 lead.
“The penalty kill was great all night,” Raiders head coach Ryan McDonald said. “Again, we’re early in the season so there’s stuff that you always want to continue to fine-tune. The pressure was good. Guys sticks were good. We’re getting clears, getting our stands.
“The big thing is you don’t want to have to kill off that many in a game. That’s something we’ll go back and we’ll talk about and learn from.”
“We obviously never want that to happen,” Meunier added. “Penalties cost us. We want to be playing five-on-five. We’re a good team five-on-five, so that was definitely addressed…. We’ve got to stay out of the box, but we held our heads high, stayed positive, killed them off, and got back to work. It was just positive energy on the bench.”
Czech netminder Michal Orsulak started in goal for the Raiders and made 29 saves for his first WHL win. Orsulak was a big part of the successful Raiders penalty kill, making 13 stops in the second period.
At the other end, Blades netminder Ethan McCallum turned aside 25 shots, including a sprawling highlight reel save late in the third period that kept the Blades within one before Chenier’s empty-netter.
“(Orsulak) made some great saves,” McDonald said. “Whenever you have to kill that many penalties your goaltender is a big part of it. He got out, stopped the puck behind the net … was big in there, and was that big blocking guy that we needed.”
Petr opened the scoring with a power play goal at 10:59 of the first period. The game remained 1-0 Saskatoon until the second when Oiring found himself alone in the slot and wired a one-timer past McCallum on a pass from Brayden Dube.
The Raiders took the lead for good roughly six minutes later when Rudolph’s wrist shot from the top of the circle beat McCallum low blocker side.
Prince Albert went up 3-1 on Meunier’s goal 2:26 into the third period. Olsen made it 3-2 on a wrist shot that beat Orsulak glove side near the midway point, but that was as close as the visitors got. Chenier iced the game for Prince Albert on an empty-net goal with 1:28 to play.
The Raiders and Blades are back at it in Saskatoon on Saturday. Puck drop is 7 p.m.
