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| The Raiders and Regina Pats faceoff to start a WHL game last month. |
For some legacy followers of other WHL teams, it is time to make travel plans to attend the Memorial Cup in Rimouski, Quebec, which runs from May 22, 2025 to June 1, 2025.
At this point in the 2024-25 campaign, it is way too early to head out on any of those extremes. Still, some fans do let their passions fly high to the point it feels like they are cheering for a favourite CFL or NFL team. Those leagues have short seasons, and early stumbles are a lot more difficult to recover from on those circuits.
A WHL regular season is 68 games long, which means all teams will go through times when they stumble and times when they are red hot. Over the first couple of weeks of the regular season, games for most WHL teams are spread out with sizable chunks of off time.
The schedule is usually set up like that because most clubs are still getting players cycled back from professional training camps. When players return to WHL clubs, those squads usually have to then assign younger players to under-18 AAA or junior A clubs.
Doing a quick glance over social media lines, it seems like Prince Albert Raiders fans are doing well riding the wave. They realized the Raiders shuffled the deck as the team’s roster goes from how it looked in 2023-24. The Raiders also just got some players back from the NHL ranks in Tomas Mrsic (St. Louis Blues), Lukas Dragicevic (Seattle Kraken) and Norwin Panocha (Buffalo Sabres), and the fans seem to realize there will be an adjustment period.
This column of mine appeared in the Prince Albert Daily Herald. To read the full article, feel free to click right here.
