Blades’ Priestner one day should get executive of the year nod

From left, Colin Priestner with Trevor Wong and Steve Hildebrand.

Colin Priestner is a hockey guy.

Actually, he has been a hockey guy for some time now.

There was a time Priestner was known for being a folk-rock singer and songwriter, a high level tennis player, and a car dealership owner. Those were all roles he had filled at one point before his family bought the WHL’s Saskatoon Blades before start of the 2013-14 campaign, where father Mike assumed majority ownership of the club. Colin, who was 29-years-old at the time, became a managing partner of the team in early September of 2013.

Fast forward to the current day, and the now 40-year-old Priestner is the veteran general manager and president of the Blades. His Blades topped the WHL regular season standings in 2023-24 with a 50-13-2-3 record. They have made the Eastern Conference Championship Series for a second straight year.

The Blades open the best-of-seven conference championship series against the Moose Jaw Warriors this coming Friday at 7 p.m. at the SaskTel Centre. It will mark the first time since the 1993 post-season the Eastern Conference Championship Series will be an all-Saskatchewan battle. Back in 1993, the Swift Current Broncos swept away the Regina Pats 4-0 and advanced on to win the WHL Championship Series in seven games against the Portland Winterhawks.

This year’s Eastern Conference final has the potential to be a classic with the Warriors having finished fifth overall in the WHL regular season with a 44-21-0-3 mark. Both the Blades and Warriors are in search of their first WHL championship.

One day, Priestner should be tabbed as the winner of the Lloyd Saunders Memorial Trophy as the WHL’s executive of the year. It is actually too bad he didn’t win that honour last year or was named to be up for that honour this year.

Colin Priestner pictured in the Blades dressing room in 2016.

With that said, Seattle Thunderbirds general manager Bil La Forge took that honour on a league level a year ago and Warriors general manager Jason Ripplinger is the nominee for the East Division, which the Blades play out of, this year. Both are long time good executives, and you can’t argue against their respective nods.

Still, Priestner in the current day is best known as being the general manager of the Blades, and he has built a reputation of being an outstanding executive. When he became the Blades general manager before the start of the 2016-17 campaign, you can bet there was some skepticism around that move.

At that time, Priestner was still viewed as more of a hockey outsider and was thought of being a folk-rock singer and songwriter, a high level tennis player, and a car dealership owner. Of course, the thought was out there Priestner was able to hold the role of Blades general manager because his father was the majority owner of the team.

Colin’s younger brother, James Priestner, was known as the hockey guy in the family. James was a goalie in the WHL suiting up for the Kamloops Blazers, Brandon Wheat Kings and Prince George Cougars from 2007 to 2011. These days James is the frontman and chief songwriter Vancouver based band Rare Americans.

As the Blades were stuck in a lengthy rebuild due to the fact the Priestner family bought the team after hosting the CHL championship tournament – the Memorial Cup - in 2013, the club turned heads trying new things on the business promotion side with theme nights, which included a Star Wars Night on November 28, 2015. There were people around the WHL that didn’t know at the time what to make of the Blades trying out new things on the promotional side.

Early on in his time as Blades general manager, you could sense Colin had a pretty good grasp of what he was taking on. He grew into his role quite quickly, and it safe to say he learned lessons observing various general managers he saw during his time on the circuit.

During his first season in the league in 2013-14, Lorne Molleken was still serving as the Blades general manager. While the Priestners would move in a new direction parting ways with Molleken following the 2013-14 campaign, Colin likely learned what it was like to have a strong and good passion for the team and how to treat people with class.

Colin Priestner, left, with Aidan De La Gorgendiere in 2017.

Molleken, in the roles of head coach and general manager, tried his hardest to see the Blades become WHL and Memorial Cup title winners. The Blades had a lot of great teams under Molleken’s watch, but they weren’t able to achieve those two much desired championship wins. No matter where Molleken goes in life, he will always be a member of the Blades, and Priestner got see what it was like when a team is more than a team.

Priestner got to see how former Brandon Wheat Kings head coach, general manager and owner Kelly McCrimmon, who is currently the general manager of the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights, built a team. McCrimmon is best known for being the master when it comes to making trades.

During his second season as the Blades general manager in 2017-18, Priestner showed how skilled he could be on the trade front leading and on the WHL Trade Deadline of January 10, 2018. The Blades at the time were trying to end a playoff drought that spanned four consecutive seasons. They were battling for a playoff spot in an East Division when that division might have been the toughest it has ever been.

Priestner made a series of deals that allowed the roster to still compete for a playoff berth that season, but really set the club to take off the following season. The Blades two best players in star centre Cameron Hebig and Czech import defenceman Libor Hajek were sent to the Memorial Cup hosting Pats as 19-year-old veterans.

On top of various draft picks that came back, the Blades landed 19-year-old offensive-defenceman Dawson Davidson and 16-year-old forward prospect Tristen Robins from the Pats. Saskatoon also acquired 19-year-old star centre Max Gerlach from the Medicine Hat Tigers and centre Eric Florchuk from the Victoria Royals.

The Blades would finish with a 35-33-3-1 record finishing seventh overall in Eastern Conference, but with the playoff rules at the time mirroring the current NHL post-season rules, the Blades missed the playoffs by three points.

Colin Priestner, left, with Mitch Love in 2019.

The moves Priestner made were the right ones as Davidson, Gerlach, Florchuk and Robins would play key roles helping the Blades finish fourth overall in the WHL standings in 2018-19 with a 45-15-8 mark. Robins would become one of the Blades top players for the next three seasons. Priestner had found lots of success on the trade front since that time.

Another person Priestner likely picked up tips from came from observing Lethbridge Hurricanes general manager Peter Anholt.

One day after the 2017-18 campaign ended, Priestner released head coach Dean Brockman, who was about 16 years older than Priestner. While Brockman was a great coach with a lengthy resume of success at the junior A level with the Humboldt Broncos, things just didn’t work out with him and Priestner. Those things happen in the world of hockey and no hard feelings are kept.

At a time when WHL teams often recycled veteran head coaches, Anholt out in Lethbridge hired 32-year-old Brent Kisio to be his head coach with the Hurricanes before the start of the 2015-16 campaign. Kisio had been a long time assistant coach with the Calgary Hitmen and was more than ready for a head coach opportunity.

Anholt went back to a previous era in the WHL, when the circuit saw a lot of good younger head coaches move on to the professional ranks. The Hurricanes experienced a fair amount of success with Kisio as head coach before he moved on to join the Henderson Silver Knights of the AHL as an assistant coach.

Priestner went the younger route and hit grand slams with his next two head coach hires. In May of 2018, Priestner hired then 33-year-old Mitch Love to be the Blades head coach.

Love had been a long time Everett Silvertips assistant coach before joining the Blades. The Blades were one of the WHL’s top tier teams in the three seasons Love served as head coach before moving on to the professional ranks. He is currently an assistant coach with the NHL’s Washington Capitals.

Colin Priestner speaks at a press conference in 2019.

After Love left for the professional ranks, Priestner hired the Blades current head coach Brennan Sonne on July 21, 2021. Sonne was 34-years-old when he came to the Blades. He has been a Silvertips assistant coach for three seasons and head coach of the Angers club in the professional league in France for four seasons.

Before Sonne became Saskatoon’s head coach, the last time the Blades were in the Eastern Conference final was back in 1994, when Molleken was guiding the team as head coach. It is a safe bet to believe Sonne is going to get a professional opportunity sooner than later, but Blades fans can hope Sonne decides he could be to the Blades what Brian Kilrea was to the Ottawa 67’s.

Priestner likely picked up some lessons studying Medicine Hat Tigers head coach and general manager Willie Desjardins. The biggest lessons there would be invest in and have empathy for your players.

Arguably the best work Priestner did as general manager was helping a pair of his best players in Aidan De La Gorgendiere and Egor Sidorov navigate rough waters there are no textbooks for.

De La Gorgendiere had to deal with the passing of his mother, Marla Meginbir, due to cancer on November 12, 2019 at age 51. At the time, De La Gorgendiere was skating through his 17-year-old sophomore season.

In the past, it was common that careers for WHL players that deal with the passing of a parent don’t end up being as successful as they should have been. The passing of a parent is a lot for a teenage aged player to deal with.

From left, Les Lazaruk, Colin Priestner and Lorne Molleken in 2022.

With Priestner’s help in that situation, De La Gorgendiere went on to become the Blades captain in his last two seasons with the club in 2021-22 and 2022-23 before graduating from the major junior ranks. He still has the potential to be in the NHL one day but at the moment is looking after his schooling playing for the storied University of Alberta Golden Bears Men’s Hockey Team in the U Sports ranks.

Sidorov is current the Blades star 19-year-old right-winger from Belarus, who posted 50 goals, 38 assists and a plus-eight rating in 66 contest in the 2023-24 regular season for the Blades. Late in Sidorov’s 17-year-old rookie season with the Blades, Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, and Belarus supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Due the instability in that part of the world, it was decided that Sidorov would remain in Canada. Priestner went the extra mile dealing with immigration to allow Sidorov to remain in the country.

With the support of Priestner and the Blades, Sidorov had a stellar 2022-23 campaign recording 40 goals, 36 assists and a plus-25 rating in 53 regular season games. He posted nine goals, 10 assists and plus-three rating in 16 appearances in the 2023 WHL Playoffs.

That resulted in Sidorov being selected in the third round and 85^th overall by the Anaheim Ducks in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft. He signed a three-year, entry-level contract with the Ducks on April 3.

Once he was drafted by the Ducks, Sidorov made it back to Belarus to visit his family.

If you’re a parent and you saw how spectacularly Priestner handled De La Gorgendiere’s and Sidorov’s situations, you would want your kid to play for the Saskatoon Blades.

Colin Priestner hugs Blades star RW Egor Sidorov.

Once viewed as the hockey outsider, Priestner has grown into an elite level general manager. On the side, he could still craft a good song or show off a few tricks on the tennis court when those opportunities present themselves too.

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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