2023-24 Blades brought Saskatoon together

Fans came to SaskTel Centre in droves for playoff run

Fraser Minten gives a souvenir stick to a fan at a May 3 home game.

In an agonizing defeat, the Saskatoon Blades fans ensured their team got a thank you.

On May 7, the Blades faced the Moose Jaw Warriors in Game 7 of the WHL’s Eastern Conference Championship Series and a campaign high crowd of 13,240 spectators poured into the SaskTel Centre. The teams would go to overtime locked in a 2-2 tie. It marked the sixth time the two sides went to overtime in what has been viewed as the greatest post-season series ever played in the history of the WHL.

Just 36 seconds into overtime, Warriors 17-year-old sophomore right-winger Lynden Lakovic drove down the right wing into the Saskatoon zone. From a bad angle, Lakovic backhanded the puck toward the Saskatoon net.

Warriors star overage right-winger Atley Calvert drove towards the Saskatoon net while being covered by Blades utility winger Tyler Parr. The puck from Lakovic’s backhand deflected off Parr’s skate into the Saskatoon net to deliver the Warriors to a 3-2 victory in the extra session.

Fans at the SaskTel Centre cheer on the Blades.

The Warriors went on to sweep the WHL Championship Series 4-0 over the Portland Winterhawks. Moose Jaw is currently playing in the Memorial Cup tournament in Saginaw, Michigan, that determines a CHL champion.

In the Game 7 encounter between the Warriors and Blades, Moose Jaw had a sizable contingent of supporters that filled five fan busses that made the jaunt to Saskatoon. When Lakovic’s OT winner went in, the Warriors fans in attendance broke into a joyful, cloud nine type of feeling celebration.

After the initial momentum of the celebration of the Warriors fans died down, the Blades supporters, who filled the vast majority of the building, showered down a salute to their heroes who were trying to process at that point what happened.

Following the traditional post-series handshakes, the Warriors were presented with the Eastern Conference championship trophy and departed the ice to the applause of their fans that gathered around their bench area.

Some of the signs Blades fans brought out at warmups.

Once the Warriors departed, the Blades did a sticks raised lap to salute their supporters in attendance and the fans returned their own heartwarming salute. Captain Trevor Wong, who had just played his final career WHL game, skated around giving applause to the fans and motioning to the chest that he took them to heart.

Some of the Blades players would linger on the ice for a lengthy stretch processing the end of their campaign before finally making their way to the team’s dressing room.

In the days that followed, fans were phoning into radio shows and commenting on various public forums that they were proud of the team. They were saying everyone with the team from players, coaches and management could hold their heads high for how they played in the post-season run and especially in the epic series clash with Moose Jaw.

The reaction was much different compared to post-season runs the Blades made in the early 1990s. When the Blades made the WHL Championship Series in 1992 and 1994 and lost both of those trips in seven games to the eventual Memorial Cup champion Kamloops Blazers, the fans were proud of those runs, but there was an undercutting undertone.

Trevor Wong salutes the SaskTel Centre crowd on May 7.

You would have fans phoning into sports call in shows, TV shows and sending feedback to the Saskatoon StarPhoenix newspaper that then general manager Daryl Lubiniecki was the lead weight that was holding the Blades back. Throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, Lubiniecki was with the Blades full-time mainly as the general manager, and the team won about 60 per cent of its games and made numerous long runs in the WHL Playoffs.

The long runs didn’t result in any WHL titles or Memorial Cup championships. Back in those days, the general manager of the Blades in Saskatoon was usually treated like the general manager of the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders as being hated by the fans, or at least the ones that were vocal and there were a lot of those.

If you run into Lubiniecki these days, he often makes jokes of the fact the fans wanted him to be fired when he was the Blades general manager. He adds in the present day everyone in Saskatoon loves him now, and he always gets a warm reception when he attends Blades games as a fan.

When Mike Priestner’s family bought the team before the start of the 2013-14 campaign, team management put an emphasis on attracting new fans and creating links to the community. That continued as the Blades were moved under the umbrella of the newly created Sask Entertainment Group with the Priestner family having purchased the NLL’s Saskatchewan Rush in May of 2021 and an expansion franchise in the Western Canadian Baseball League in March of 2023 that has become the Saskatoon Berries, who just embarked on their inaugural season.

Charlie Wright was reliable on the back end for the Blades.

The Blades faithfully kept up their school visits, visits to minor hockey teams as guest coaches and various other works in community outreach. That has resulted in the team drawing more new and younger fans with their long post-season runs the past two seasons, and those fans have fallen in love with the team.

In 2022-23, the Blades averaged 4,506 spectators per game over 34 home dates and 8,780 spectators per contest over 10 home post-season dates. 

During the 2023-24 campaign, the Blades averaged 5,166 spectators per game over 34 home dates and 9,332 spectators per contest over nine post-season home dates.

The Blades average attendance for the regular season was the highest it had been since the team drew an average of 6,040 spectators to 36 home dates during the 2012-13 campaign, when the club hosted the Memorial Cup tournament. The squad’s post-season average attendance figures are believed to be the best they have been since those runs in 1992 and 1994 to the WHL final, when capacity at the SaskTel Centre was configured for around 11,300 spectators for hockey games.

The new supporters carry their fandom in a more healthy way. They usually have busy lives and that includes families who have children working their way through minor hockey. For those members of the Blades faithful, jaunts to the SaskTel Centre for Blades games are a break from those lives.

Easton Armstrong became a Blades fan favourite in 2023-24.

For the young kids at the games, they see players like Wong, Egor Sidorov, Brandon Lisowsky, Fraser Minten, Easton Armstrong, Vaughn Watterodt, Alexander Suzdalev, Tanner Molendyk, Charlie Wright, Ben Saunderson John Babcock, Evan Gardner and Austin Elliott as their heroes. Blades head coach Brennan Sonne said it has been cool to drive to work in the mornings and see kids going to school wearing Blades jerseys and Blades gear.

Blades general manager Colin Priestner said he had fans coming up to him in the concourse during the Game 7 loss to the Warriors passing on thank you messages for the post-season run.

It should be noted the Blades do have a good block of legacy fans that follow the team through thick and thin. There are some legacy fans that base the happiness of their lives around the Blades winning or losing and do moan the fact that the team has never won a league title or a Memorial Cup since being formed in 1964. The grips on that front have faded more to the background.

Reminders that the Blades have never won a league title or a Memorial Cup come loudly from the fans of the club’s archrivals in the Prince Albert Raiders. Raiders fans ensure that those non-successes by the Blades are always remembered.

Egor Sidorov had 50 goals and 88 points in the 2023-24 regular season.

Still, the 2023-24 campaign was a special one for the Blades. They topped the WHL’s overall standings with a 50-13-2-3 record for 105 standings points. Saskatoon won 50 or more games in a regular season for just the third time in team history and hit 100 or more standings points for the sixth time since the franchise first hit the ice in 1964.

Wong led the Blades in regular season scoring with 101 points coming off 15 goals and 86 assists. Sidorov had a memorable campaign setting career highs in the regular season for goals (50), assists (38) and points (88).

Wong hitting 100 points and Sidorov collecting 50 goals marked the first time Blades players had realized those accomplishments since the 1995-96 campaign.

In the WHL Playoffs, the Blades took out the Raiders in five games in the first round and swept the Red Deer Rebels 4-0 in a WHL Eastern Conference semifinal series.

Brandon Lisowsky has been a consistent point producer.

Tonnes of great memories were made.

Any sadness that came resulted from the realization that an end of an era likely had come for a core group of Blades players. 

Wong, Armstrong and Wright were in their 20-year-old seasons and have now exhausted their major junior eligibilities.

It is expected Minten, Sidorov, Lisowsky and Suzdalev will all be in the professional ranks next season. They all have NHL entry-level contracts and will be in their 20-year-old seasons. 

Molendyk could be back as a 19-year-old player, but there is a very real chance the Nashville Predators could elect to keep him in the NHL.

Wong, Sidorov and Lisowsky were basically one of the Blades forward lines for the last three straight seasons. It will be different not seeing them together on the ice together as a unit wearing the “Pac-Man” jerseys.

With all that in mind, there are lots of young child aged fans that attended games at the SaskTel Centre over the past two seasons that will remember watching this generation of Blades as a childhood highlight years from now.

The Blades celebrate an OT victory on May 3.

These were “smile because they happened” times in Saskatoon that brought a lot of much needed good feelings to the city in a world today when it seems there is lots to complain about in seemingly every walk of life.

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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