Break time has come again which will seem
short
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| A picture of myself outside The Arena in Medicine Hat. |
The break will be interrupted for one story on Wednesday. The Saskatoon Sports Hall of Fame is announcing its class for 2025 in the main hall of the Gordie Howe Sports Centre building on the Gordie Howe Sports Complex grounds that day. I will write about that announcement here, and then I don’t plan to be in this space until the CJFL season starts for the Saskatoon Hilltops.
Even for me, that season is going to come way too fast when I see their Alumni Game is set for July 31 at 7 p.m. at Ron Atchison Field.
Over the past couple of years, the pressure has been mounting on my shoulders to be present at home more from my family. There was a time I felt family was “all in” when it came to my involvement in covering sports.
The real truth is that when someone is involved in sports it creates an unfair situation with their relationships in their blood family. Basically, the family members that are not involved with sports have to shoulder extra responsibilities in the home and the family. In a lot of cases, that unfair relationship gets challenged where it does need to evolve.
I’ve been more involved in planning fun family things, but even those fun things have their stress. There are other things that take up time.
During winter, I am hands on with snow clearing in my household as well as trying to get out to clear the snow from the homes of the seniors in the family. Last winter was a hard one on that front in Saskatoon, and I estimate I spent 106 total hours involved in snow clearing. When that happens, it pushes off and cancels other things.
The list of things I need to do around the home keeps getting larger. I have things on the hobby side I want to get to as well, but it seems impossible to get to those things.
These breaks I take from this blog coincide with the hockey off-season. The past two hockey off-seasons before this one I spent a tonne of time archiving photos from the games I worked in the WHL Playoffs and that ate away time at trying to focus on other things.
All the photos on that front this year have been looked after, so I am hoping that helps with the home life and maybe getting a break.
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| The Tigers run to winning the WHL title was big in Medicine Hat. |
For the WHL Playoffs, I was going to fall off that road once both the Saskatoon Blades and Prince Albert Raiders were eliminated. I stayed on that trail as the Medicine Hat Tigers, who I have a lot of links to, marched on to win their sixth WHL championship.
The Tigers made it to the title game of the Memorial Cup tournament that determines a CHL champion. In that title clash played last Sunday at the Coliseum Sun Life Financial in Rimouski, Quebec, the Tigers fell 4-1 to the OHL champion London Knights.
I do admit my trips to Medicine Hat were super valuable on numerous levels. I don’t even think I know how many levels of my life the trips to Medicine Hat positively affected me on the personal and work fronts.
I was thinking about following the Saskatoon Valkyries 2025 campaign to a conclusion on this blog. I shot photos today of their 16-12 regular season victory over the Manitoba Fearless for the Gordie Howe Sports Complex social media lines. I also did interviews for their teams’ videos to be used on their various platforms.
The Valkyries finished the WWCFL regular season with a 4-0 record and will host a WWCFL semifinal at a date and time to be announced. I decided I needed to use the time I would put into the Valkyries on this blog into other things.
With that said, the Valkyries are one of my favourite teams in the whole city of Saskatoon. Best part is the Valkyries players, coaches and staffers are very understanding when other things come up that take you away from the team.
The other thing I want to get back into is regular workouts. I got my regular workouts done for a week in the last week of May. Before that week, I hadn’t worked out since March.
My body physically feels like it is in the worst shape it has ever been in since I became an adult. With that said, I think I am still doing better than 80 per cent of the population.
Also, it is on my mind that the sports media industry is cut as bad as it has ever been, and there are tonnes of sports organizations that don’t get the coverage they deserve including a number of CFL teams. I also accept I can’t fill that void, and I do have to be mindful of looking out for myself.
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| The Valkyries do a cheer after their victory on Sunday. |
Anyways, it is time to go, but I will be back. I will be involved in the sports world, but that involvement will depend upon what the cards are that life deals my way.
Elliott is forever a CHL championship goalie
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| Austin Elliott with the Memorial Cup. (Photo by Vincent Ethier/CHL) |
The WHL champion Tigers made the final of the Memorial Cup tournament that determines a CHL champion and fell 4-1 to the OHL champion London Knights last Sunday at the Coliseum Sun Life Financial in Rimouski, Quebec. While the Tigers didn’t win that title game, I was happy that the Knights winning goalie was overager Austin Elliott.
When the 2024-25 campaign began, I didn’t think Austin Elliott would be a WHL castoff having played two complete seasons from 2022 to 2024 for the Saskatoon Blades. In the 2024 WHL Playoffs, he lost the job as the Blades starting netminder to Evan Gardner, who would be selected in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft by the Columbus Blue Jackets and would later sign an entry-level contract with that club.
If Elliott wasn’t starting for the Blades as an overager, I thought he would be a starting goalie in the WHL in the 2024-25 campaign. I believed you could argue that only about six other goalies were better than Elliott, and I likely should have pushed that point during the 2024 off-season.
I did have a couple of WHL observers come to me and say that Elliott was done as far as major junior hockey goes.
At the start of the 2024-25 regular season, Elliott made three starts with the Blades collecting wins in all three outings posting a 2.33 goals against average and a .897 save percentage. When Gardner returned from camp activities with the Blue Jackets organization, Elliott became a victim to the numbers game. He was released by the Blades and cleared WHL waivers.
In most cases when that happens to a player in the WHL, that player ultimately ends up playing junior A.
The Knights, who have been the top franchise in the CHL for the last 21 years, had other ideas. They were about to show why they are arguably the smartest organization in the CHL, which results in their continued winning ways resulting in dismay for their ever growing number of haters. The Knights haters are there, because the Knights always win.
Elliott was actually claimed on CHL waivers by the Barrie Colts, but that didn’t deter the powerhouse Knights. On October 16, 2024, the Knights dealt a 14th round selection in the 2026 OHL Draft and a conditional fifth round pick in the 2027 OHL Draft for Elliott. The puck stopper never played a game for the Colts.
Elliott, who stands 6-foot-1 and weighs 180 pounds, played in 33 regular season games for the Knights posting a 32-1 record, a 2.10 goals against average, a .924 save percentage and three shutouts. Thanks to Elliott’s work, the Knights topped the OHL standings with a 55-11-2 mark and were rated second in the final CHL Top 10 Rankings released on March 25.
He started all of the 17 games the Knights played in the OHL Playoffs posting a 16-1 record, a 2.46 goals against average and one shutout as London claimed a second straight league title.
Elliott’s roll continued at the Memorial Cup tournament. During London’s five games at the Memorial Cup tournament, Elliott posted a 4-1 record, a 1.59 goals against average and a .943 save percentage. He went 55-3 including play in the WHL regular season, the OHL regular season and post-season and the Memorial Cup tournament.
When he was with the Blades, Elliott, who is from Strathmore, Alta., was an extremely likeable person. He was someone you wanted to see succeed.
It was cool to see him post a dream conclusion to his CHL career. When Elliott became an OHL and Memorial Cup champion, it showed there are times that good things do indeed come to good people.
Habscheid back in WHL with Rebels, other
notes
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| Marc Habscheid raises the Ed Chynoweth Cup on May 13, 2019. |
On Thursday, Red Deer Rebels general manager, president and owner Brent Sutter announced that Marc Habscheid had been hired as the team’s new head coach. Habscheid, 62, replaces Dave Struch, 54, who stepped down on May 9 for personal family reasons.
Habscheid last coached in the WHL as the head coach for the Prince Albert Raiders from November 1, 2014 to July 14, 2022. He guided the Raiders to first overall in the WHL’s regular season standings in 2018-19 and WHL championship in the 2019 post-season.
He proceeded to coach two seasons of professional hockey in Austria. Last season, Habscheid had surgery on both hips, travelled a lot and bought a house in Spain.
From 1997 to 2022, Habscheid served as a head coach in the WHL for 18 seasons with the Kamloops Blazers, Kelowna Rockets, Chilliwack Bruins, Victoria Royals and Raiders. He piled up 582 career wins in 1,166 regular season games coached. Habscheid’s wins and games coached total in the regular season rank as the sixth most in both departments in the history of the WHL.
In the WHL Playoffs, Habscheid posted 75 wins in 139 games coached. He guided the Rockets to a WHL championship in the 2002-03 season and a Memorial Cup title as the tournament’s host team in 2004.
Habscheid was named the WHL coach of the year twice in the 2002-03 and 2018-19 campaigns. He claimed honours as the CHL’s coach of the year for the 2002-03 season.
In 2024-25, the Rebels posted a 26-34-6-2 mark finishing ninth overall in the WHL’s Eastern Conference and 13 points back of the Swift Current Broncos (35-30-1-2) for eighth place and the final playoff berth in the conference.
Bringing Habscheid aboard was a huge addition for the Rebels. During his introductory press conference on Friday in Red Deer, Habscheid already started setting the steps to rally the people in the city and area around the team he is coaching, which is a characteristic he successfully accomplished in his past WHL stops.
“To win in the end, it doesn’t take just one player, one line, one coach, one trainer, one owner, it takes everybody, and that includes the city,” said Habscheid. “Everybody in Red Deer and area is important, if we’re going to win in the end and be successful.
“I want the city and the fans to know that they’re going to be a part of it, and we need their support.”
Sutter was pleased that Habscheid decided to join the Rebels.
“We coached against each other,” said Sutter. “We’ve both had success as coaches, and one thing that always stuck out with me that I kept going back to was I knew when I had to coach against him that his team was going to be very well prepared.
“I’m thrilled that ‘Habby’ wanted to be in Red Deer and wanted to coach the Red Deer Rebels. There’s an identity that we have here, and his teams played with the same identity.”
- During the Medicine Hat Tigers run to winning the WHL championship and falling in the title game of the Memorial Cup tournament, I loved the work that was put in covering that run by Tigers play-by-play voice Will Bryant and Medicine Hat News sportswriter James Tubb. Just to note, I listed them by last names in alphabetical order. Anyways, both did an outstanding job. I am also proud of the fact that in the 11 years since I left the Medicine Hat News and relocated to Saskatoon that the coverage and storytelling of the sports scene in “The Gas City” is in good hands.
- On Wednesday, it was announced the Prince Albert Raiders and Saskatoon Blades will open the 2025-26 campaign playing a home-and-home series against each other. The two sides go at it on Friday, September 19 at the storied and historic Art Hauser Centre in Prince Albert and on Saturday, September 20 at the SaskTel Centre in Saskatoon.
- On Wednesday, it was announced the defending WHL champion Medicine Hat Tigers will open their 2025-26 regular season hosting the Regina Pats on Saturday, September 20, at Co-op Place in Medicine Hat.
- On Thursday, 22-year-old forward Conner Roulette committed to playing for the University of Saskatchewan Huskies Men’s Hockey Team starting with the 2025-26 campaign. Last season, Roulette played for the Tulsa Oilers of the ECHL, and he posted 17 goals, 17 assists and a plus-14 rating in the plus-minus department in 59 regular season games. From 2019 to 2024, Roulette played in 259 career WHL regular season contests with the Seattle Thunderbirds, Saskatoon Blades and Spokane Chiefs posting 118 goals, 170 assists and a plus-69 rating.
If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.
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