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| A quartet of Tigers players take part in a prayer circle on Saturday. |
The trigger moment for the rising heat between the two fan bases came at the conclusion of Game 2 of the set played before a sellout crowd of 3,299 spectators at the storied and historic Art Hauser Centre, which was won 5-0 by the Tigers on Saturday night. At that point, the Christian players on the Tigers set out to do their traditional prayer circle.
Before I go on, I want to say I liked how all parties in the Tigers, Raiders and the game officials handled the next part.
After the game ended, Raiders defencemen Linden Burrett and Matyas Man skated to centre ice, and both went down on one knee at the faceoff circle. When the Tigers were done celebrating and sharing congratulations around netminder Jordan Switzer, Tigers captain Bryce Pickford, assistant captain Jonas Woo, centre Shaeffer Gordon-Carroll, right-winger Luke Cozens and left-winger Cam Parr separated from the rest of the Tigers and looked towards centre ice.
Pickford, Woo, Gordon-Carroll and Cozens are the four regulars who always take part in the Tigers prayer circle. To me, it looked like the group of Tigers players asked the Raiders players if they wanted to do a prayer together.
From my view, it looked like Burrett waved them away and told the Tigers players to go do their thing. In sports, the team logo at centre ice or centre field is a big thing, and it seemed like the Raiders players wanted to protect the logo.
This column of mine appeared in the Prince Albert Daily Herald. To read the full article, feel free to click right here.
