Too many tight losses hurt Raiders for post-season mix in 2022-23

The Raiders celebrate a win on February 17.

Too many close losses led to the undoing of the Prince Albert Raiders playoff hopes in 2022-23.

Hitting the ice with a young team this past season, the Raiders will benefit from the lessons they learned in the 2023-24 campaign. In 2022-23, the Raiders finished with a 28-37-3 record to finish 11^th in the WHL’s Eastern Conference 10 points behind the 30-29-8-1 Medicine Hat Tigers for eighth place and the conference’s final playoff berth.

The Raiders finished 18^th in the WHL’s overall standings for the 22 team circuit. While the Raiders were last in the six-team East Division, they had the best record among the clubs that finished last in their respective divisions. That meant the division and conference the Raiders were playing out of was highly competitive in 2022-23.

One area that kept the Raiders back this past season was their record in one-goal games, where they posted a 10-11-3 mark. Out those 11 losses in regulation and three in overtime, Raiders head coach Jeff Truitt and his staff have probably done some mental gymnastics of what combinations of those one-goal losses would have gotten the Raiders into the post-season.

This column of mine appeared in the Prince Albert Daily Herald. To read the full article, feel free to click the link right here.