 |
| The Raiders celebrate a goal during a game earlier this season. |
On March 10, the Raiders general manager Curtis Hunt relieved head coach Jeff Truitt, 59, of his duties. Ryan McDonald, 37, was promoted from assistant coach to interim head coach.
At the time of those moves, the Raiders were sitting first in the WHL’s East Division with a 34-22-5-1 record. They had a one standings point lead over the Brandon Wheat Kings and Saskatoon Blades.
During the final six games where Truitt served as the Raiders head coach, they posted a 1-3-2 record including dropping both ends of a home-and-home series to the archrival Blades in regulation. It seemed like the Raiders were repeating a trend from the previous campaign, where they went 2-9 over their last 11 games including action in the regular season and the WHL Playoffs. It is possible that parallelism was one of the factors that went into Hunt’s decision to make a move.
Hunt told Nathan Reiter of the Daily Herald that he made the decision because he thought a new voice was needed in the dressing room. The Raiders got a preview of what things would look like with a new main voice behind the bench during their first 15 games after coming back from their Christmas break.
This story of mine appeared in the Prince Albert Daily Herald. To read the full article, feel free to click right here.
