The longer a team plays during a season the more the end will hurt unless you win it all.
The Prince Albert Raiders special 2025-26 campaign came to an end last Friday, when they dropped a 7-2 decision to the visiting Everett Silvertips in Game 5 of the WHL Championship Series. With the win, the Silvertips took the best-of-seven set 4-1 to claim their first WHL championship in team history.
As everyone with the Raiders deals with the emotional aftermath of falling in the WHL final, the realization does hit that it was a special season. Prince Albert topped the Eastern Conference, claimed the East Division title and finished second overall in the WHL with a 52-10-5-1 mark. The Raiders were rated fourth in the final CHL Top 10 Rankings.
For everyone who is linked to the Raiders, they have nothing to hang their heads about. They experienced a campaign that created many special memories that players, coaches, managers, staffers and fans with the team can carry with them for the rest of their lives.
Prince Albert also fell to a quality organization in the Silvertips. Everett topped the WHL regular season standings, the Western Conference and the U.S. Division with a 57-8-2-1 record and was rated first in the final CHL Top 10 Rankings. The Silvertips 57 wins and 117 standings points are team records.
The Silvertips head to the CHL championship tournament – the Memorial Cup – as the next club up trying to end the WHL’s longest drought it has ever had when it comes to winning major junior hockey’s biggest prize along with the host club in the Kelowna Rockets. The last WHL team to win the Memorial Cup was the Edmonton Oil Kings back in 2014.
The Oil Kings are the only WHL club to win the Memorial Cup since the Spokane Chiefs on May 25, 2008. That year after receiving the Memorial Cup, Chiefs captain Chris Bruton had the trophy fall apart in his hands as he attempted to give it to veteran defenceman Trevor Glass. That moment seemingly created the “Curse of the Drop” for the entire WHL as a circuit.
As for the Raiders, they have always strived to create a family feeling on their team. They really mastered that characteristic after former player on the 1985 WHL champion and Memorial Cup winning club and later team captain Curtis Hunt returned to the franchise as general manager on June 8, 2015.
As far as the Raiders in 2025-26 goes, head coach Ryan McDonald, who was born and raised in “Hockey Town North,” glowed with praise for that squad and said he would always remember that group in the dressing room.
“They came to work every single day,” said McDonald. “It was an absolute pleasure to be around and coach and be on the ice with them.
“They pushed each other. They cared for one another. It was just an absolute tremendous group to be around every single day.”
The foundation for the Raiders success came from the fact they had one of their best classes of 20-year-old players ever in captain Justice Christensen, right-winger Brayden Dube and centre Aiden Oiring. Christensen was a career member of the Raiders, while Dube and Oiring were acquired in trades early in their respective WHL careers they might as well be considered career Raiders too.
Christensen played four full seasons with the team appearing in 263 career regular season contests recording 148 points off 55 goals and 93 assists to go with a plus-22 rating in the plus-minus department. In almost four full seasons in Prince Albert, Dube skated in 232 regular season contests with the Raiders recording 156 points coming off 75 goals, 81 assists to go with a plus-20 rating. In about three-and-a-half seasons in Prince Albert, Oiring skated in 235 regular season contests with the Raiders recording 227 points coming off 85 goals and 142 assists to go with a plus-12 rating.
That atmosphere and culture with the Raiders has been so great they only lost one potential returning player to the NCAA Division I hockey ranks entering the 2025-26 campaign. In that case, forward Tomas Mrsic joined the Colorado College Tigers to play alongside older brother Mateo Mrsic.
Prince Albert as a community also has to take a bow the Raiders only had one returning player depart for the NCAA. The folks in the northern Saskatchewan centre helped make P.A. a welcoming place that Raiders players wanted to return to.
Going into the WHL final, the Raiders had great depth shown by the fact they had nine players score 20-or-more goals in the regular season, which was the most they have had since the 1985-86 campaign. The Silvertips had 15 players who scored 10-or-more goals, so they showed their depth in that way.
This year’s WHL final also seemed to follow a trend set by the previous three WHL Championship Series that saw two evenly matched teams go at it on paper only for one squad to go on roll to take the series in four or five games. The WHL began holding post-seasons again in 2022 after the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic eliminated playoffs in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, the Edmonton Oil Kings prevailed over the Seattle Thunderbirds in six games marking the last time a WHL final has gone that long.
In 2023, the Winnipeg Ice claimed Game 1 of the WHL final at home 3-2 only to lose the next four straight to the Thunderbirds. In 2024, the Moose Jaw Warriors pulled off a surprising sweep of the Portland Winterhawks.
In 2025, the Medicine Hat Tigers were locked in a 1-1 series tie with the Spokane Chiefs after the Chiefs claimed Game 2 at Co-op Place in Medicine Hat by a 6-2 score. In the next three contests at the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena, the Tigers took the series with three straight wins by scores of 6-0, 5-2 and 4-2.
In the 2026 series between the Raiders and Silvertips, the Raiders posted a 4-2 victory in Game 1 at the Angel of the Winds Arena, while the Silvertips rebounded with a 6-2 victory in Game 2 on home ice. Most didn’t think the Silvertips would win three straight at the Hauser, and Silvertips head coach Steve Hamilton said after his club’s Game 5 win that he didn’t have winning three straight in Prince Albert on his bingo card.
The series shifted on a couple of factors. First, Everett scored first in all five games of the series. The Silvertips often tallied early in the first period causing the Raiders to be in a chase position.
In their 5-2 victory in Game 4, Silvertips star import centre Julius Miettinen scored 32 seconds into the contest. In the 7-2 series clincher in Game 5, Silvertips standout left-winger Shea Busch scored 68 seconds into the game.
The other thing that hurt the Raiders was the fact their power play dried up at home. They were 2-for-4 with the man advantage in the first two games in Everett and were 2-for-17 in the three games in Prince Albert. The Silvertips were 3-for-8 on the power play at home and 4-for-16 with the man advantage on the road.
Prince Albert had a chance to take Game 3. While ultimately being outshot 44-20 in that contest, they found themselves locked in a 2-2 tie in the third period and had two power-play chances in that frame with that tied score. The Raiders weren’t able to capitalize in those moments setting the stage for Miettinen to score the winner in a 3-2 victory with 4:28 remaining in the third.
In Prince Albert, Game 4 of the series will be remembered for the no-goal by Raiders rookie defenceman Benett Kelly. With the Raiders trailing 3-2 in the third in that contest, the puck was in a net scramble at the right side of the Everett net and shot out to Kelly in front of the goal. Kelly appeared to have fired home the equalizer only for the tally to be nullified by a quick whistle with 11:33 remaining in the frame after one of the referees lost sight of the puck.
Had there been no quick whistle and Kelly’s goal had counted, that contest could have played out differently, because the Raiders would have been rolling with the momentum at that point in the game. That was a slip up by the referees in that contest.
In goal, Everett got big stops from 19-year-old star sophomore netminder Anders Miller, who posted a .922 save percentage in the series and a .932 save percentage for the entire post-season.
Still, the Silvertips got on a roll where seemingly all the breaks went their way like the Tigers last year, the Warriors in 2024 and the Thunderbirds in 2023.
Overall, the lasting memories from this Raiders season will include eliminating the defending WHL champion Tigers in six games in the Eastern Conference final. Medicine Hat swept Prince Albert in an Eastern Conference Semifinal Series one year earlier.
At some point, every member of the Raiders created a highlight or a moment. That includes many big saves coming from star import starting netminder Michal Orsulak or backup rookie netminder Steele Bass.
Daxon Rudolph established himself as one of the best defencemen in the league. Matyas Man and Linden Burrett showed both skill and toughness patrolling the blue line.
Older forwards in Braeden Cootes, Brandon Gorzynski, Alisher Sarkenov and Maddix Maddix McCagherty could light up the scoreboard. Youngsters in the 16 and 17-year-old age groups in Brock Cripps, Kelly, Ben Harvey, Connor Howe and Jonah Sivertson played way beyond their years and looked like experienced veterans at the end of the season.
McDonald in his first full season at age 38 was a finalist for WHL coach of the year. Hunt was a finalist for WHL executive of the year honours.
The 2025-26 campaign was a season to remember for the Raiders and also showed in a league final a team needs to get some breaks too in order to win a championship.
Darren Steinke is a Saskatoon-based freelance sportswriter and photographer with more than 25 years of experience covering the WHL. He blogs frequently at stankssermon.blogspot.com.
