Darren Steinke
Special to the Herald
For Prince Albert Raiders fans, it seems everything feels better when the Raiders beat the Saskatoon Blades.
When the Raiders left the junior A ranks of the SJHL for the major junior ranks joining the WHL in 1982, their rivalry with the Blades immediately formed. The fact the two centres were about 135 kilometres apart on Highway 11 made the feud a natural one.
In the Raiders first ever WHL regular season game played in 1982, they fell 7-6 in overtime to the Blades. That proved to be enough of a spark to allow the Raiders rivalry with the Blade to become one of the greatest in major junior hockey.
Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that had gripped the world, the Raiders and Blades would go a little over 20 months without playing any head-to-head clashes in front of fans.
They got to meet four times in an abbreviated 24-game regular season schedule held this past March and April in a bubble environment in Regina that featured the WHL’s member clubs from Saskatchewan and Manitoba. That allowed those teams to get in 2020-21 campaign.
When it was clear that the Raiders would be allowed to have full capacity for games for the 2021-22 campaign, you can bet the faithful in “Hockey Town North” were checking the schedule to see when the first clashes with the Blades were.
Last Friday, the two sides met for the first time in the current regular season. It was a great night to be a Raiders fan.
The Raiders led 2-1 after 40 minutes and rolled off three goals in the third period for a convincing 5-1 victory. The 2,402 in attendance were smiling like children at Christmas when The Guess Who’s “Runnin’ Back to Saskatoon” started playing during stoppages in the final minute of the third as well as at the end of the game.
The tradition of playing “Runnin’ Back to Saskatoon” after home ice victories over the Blades has to be best guilty pleasure for Raiders fans.
You can bet that win had a whole bunch of Raiders faithful racing down to Saskatoon the next night to make up a sizable contingent of the 4,214 in attendance at the SaskTel Centre for the back end of the home-and-home series.
The Raiders skated out to a 4-0 lead after 40 minutes cruising to a 5-2 victory. To add icing on the cake, the three stars were made up of all Raiders players in Sloan Stanick, Tyson Laventure and Kaiden Guhle.
The wins allowed the Raiders, who have won three straight, to improve to 5-7-0-1 creating optimism going forward for the rest of the season.
Still the overriding feeling was how great it was to beat the Blades – twice!
As a result, life at work or school seems easier, the Tim Horton’s coffee tastes that much better and the weather doesn’t seem that bad outside even when it gets nippy, if you live in Prince Albert.
For Raiders fans, it never gets old when the Raiders send the Blades runnin’ back to Saskatoon.
Heidt, Yager start hot as 16-year-old sophomores
With the attention Regina Pats 16-year-old phenom centre Connor Bedard as gotten, one shouldn’t forget about fellow 16-year-old sophomore centres in Riley Heidt and Brayden Yager.
Heidt and Yager were labeled as can’t miss prospects going into the 2020 WHL Prospects Draft. Heidt was taken second overall by the Prince George Cougars and Yager went third overall to the Moose Jaw Warriors after the Pats claimed Bedard first overall.
After 11 games, Heidt leads the Cougars in scoring with four goals and eight assists, while posting a plus-one rating in the plus-minus category.
Yager has seven goals, seven assists and a plus-two rating in 13 games with the Warriors.
Prince Albert hockey fans know Heidt and Yager well as the two were linemates with the Saskatoon Contacts under-18 AAA team before moving to the WHL.
It should not be forgotten that it is a treat to see either of those two players play.
