Rhinehart’s big night paces Blades to 9-2 romp over Tigers

The Blades celebrate a short-handed goal from Rhett Rhinehart (#41).

The Saskatoon Blades were in good hands with Rhett Rhinehart.

The 20-year-old defenceman came up with a monster game posting a pair of goals, an assist and a plus-two rating in the plus-minus department as his Blades bashed the visiting Medicine Hat Tigers 9-2 in a WHL regular season clash played before 2,713 spectators on Friday night at the SaskTel Centre.

Rhinehart was playing his first contest since the Blades fell 4-1 at the SaskTel Centre back on January 1. The Lloydminster product has been on the WHL COVID-19 Protocol List, but ultimately only missed two games.

Rhett Rhinehart had two goals and an assist on Friday.

He thought he got better as Friday’s game went on.

“It was pretty good,” said Rhinehart. “It was a little tough at first.

“It was my first game in three weeks. I was just kind of getting my legs back under me at first. Playing lots of minutes kind of helps you get into it.”

Rhinehart’s return was a welcome one as the Blades found themselves short staffed on defence due to fact four regulars were out due to COVID-19 protocols in captain Aidan De La Gorgendiere, Marek Schneider, Tanner Molendyk and Ben Saunderson.

Saskatoon played with four natural defencemen with Rhinehart being paired with Charlie Wright, while rookie Ryan Nolan was paired with sophomore Spencer Shugrue. Centre Mikhail Volotovskii was moved to defence to help out the four natural blue-liners.

Rhett Rhinehart logged a lot of minutes on the Blade blue-line on Friday.

The Blades were also without head coach Brennan Sonne, who was isolating at home due to COVID-19 protocols. Associate coach Ryan Marsh ran the Blades bench along with assistant coach Dan DaSilva and goalie coach Jeff Harvey.

Rhinehart said it was important for the Blades defencemen to play smart, and he thought that helped him be on the ice for about half the game.

“It is definitely pretty gruelling,” said Rhinehart. “You’re going the whole time.

Oasiz Wiesblatt score to put the Tigers up 2-0 early on Friday.

“You get on the bench, and then you are going on in the next 40 seconds. You don’t get a lot of rest, so at points you have to conserve your energy and kind of just not really pace yourself, but take your points when you think you want to go a little harder.”

The Tigers got a quick jump in Friday’s clash jetting out to a 2-0 lead.

On an odd man rush into the Saskatoon zone, Tigers right-winger Carter Chorney charged down the right wing and passed the puck across the front of the Blades net to overage centre Logan Barlage.

Barlage quickly blasted home his eighth goal of the season and first as a member of the Tigers to give the visitors a 1-0 lead at the 3:24 mark of the opening frame. The Tigers acquired Barlage from the Lethbridge Hurricanes in a deal that was made before last Monday’s WHL trade deadline.

Kyren Gronick (#27) celebrates putting the Blades up 3-2.

The Tigers increased their advantage to 2-0 just 2:02 later scoring on the power play. Tigers right-winger Teague Patton passed the puck from the left corner of the Blades zone across the face of the Saskatoon goal to linemate Oasiz Wiesblatt, who tapped home his fifth of the season into an open cage.

Almost as quickly as the Tigers got the jump out of the gate, the Blades turned the momentum of the contest around.

Just past the midway point of the opening frame, Shugrue sprung overage centre Tristen Robins on a breakaway into the Medicine Hat Zone. Robins snapped his 19^th goal of the season past Tigers netminder Garin Bjorklunk to cut the Medicine Hat lead to 2-1.

The Blades evened things up at 2-2 scoring just 18 seconds later, when centre Jayden Wiens slipped home a mid-range shot.

Jayden Wiens had two goals and an assist for the Blades.

Saskatoon then jumped in front 3-2 when right-winger Kyren Gronick tipped home a point shot from centre Trevor Wong with 24.2 seconds remaining in the first for a power-play tally.

Wiens liked how his squad was able to respond quickly after falling behind 2-0 early.

“We’re a team that is not going to quit, even from a tough start like here tonight,” said Wiens. “I think it shows the character of the guys and just the no quit attitude for this group and the resiliency, so that is a good thing to see.”

The Tigers got out to a solid jump to start the second holding a 7-1 edge in shots on goal over the first 8:30 of the frame. The visitors were unable to solve Blades 17-year-old rookie netminder Ethan Chadwick.

Tristen Robins had two goals and an assist for the Blades.

The Blades proceeded to increase their edge to 4-2 at the 9:56 mark of the second period, when Rhinehart fired home a power-play goal through a screen in front of the Medicine Hat net.

The Tigers looked like they were going to have a good chance to change momentum when Nolan was penalized for hooking with 3:46 remaining in the second.

On that kill, the Blades scored a pair of short-handed goals coming 31 seconds apart from each other to push their lead up to 6-2.

Robins netted the first short-handed goal for his second tally of the night and 20^th goal of the season. Rhinehart potted the second short-handed goal and his second of the night coming off a rare offensive rush up the right wing.

Ethan Chadwick made 28 saves in goal for the Blades.

“He (Rhinehart) really stepped his game up,” said Marsh. “He had been off on a little bit of a layoff based off of COVID.

“Coming back in, I was a little bit concerned with us being a little bit short, and him not having played in the last few games. I just thought as the game went on he just got better and better. He played really well for us.

“He stepped up in all situations. He did a really good job on our power play getting some opportunity there with some guys that were out. I thought he was a horse out there on our penalty kill as well, and he was a real leader for us tonight.”

Following Rhinehart’s goal that put the Blades up 6-2, the Tigers pulled starting netminder Garin Bjorklund, who stopped 10-of-16 shots sent his way. He took the setback in goal for the Tigers as they fell to 7-25-3-1 having lost their last four in a row.

Noah Boyko had three assists for the Blades on Friday.

Beckett Langkow played the rest of the way in relief for Medicine Hat turning away five-of-eight shots sent his way.

Just 51 seconds into the third, the Blades netted their third power-play goal of the night, when Wiens netted his second goal of the contest tipping home a point shot from defenceman Charlie Wright.

The Blades proceeded to round of the contest’s scoring with Gronick scoring his second power-play goal of the night and Nolan netting his first career WHL regular season goal.

Nolan was acquired by the Blades from the Tigers in a blockbuster three-team trade that involved the Prince George Cougars on December 27, 2021.

Ryan Nolan scored his first career WHL goal on Friday.

Rhinehart said he was proud of everyone who played on the Blades short staffed back end on Friday night.

“Those guys were really awesome, and we had Misha (Mikhail) Volotovskii help out on the back end as well to give us an extra man for a little bit of help there,” said Rhinehart. “Obviously, Ryan Nolan scored his first Western League goal against his old team was a pretty special moment.

“He made sure that he enjoyed that one.”

Chadwick stopped 28 shots to pick up the win in goal for the Blades, who improved to 20-14-1-1 with their third straight victory.

Robins, Wiens and Gronick each picked up a single assist to go with their respective two-goal nights. 

Egor Sidorov (#19) shows off some fancy stick work.

Wong and right-winger Noah Boyko each picked up three assists on Friday for the Blades.

The Blades return to action on Saturday when they host the Winnipeg Ice (7 p.m., SaskTel Centre).

The Tigers also get back at it Saturday when they travel to Prince Albert to face the 15-20-1-1 Raiders (7 p.m., Art Hauser Centre).

Marsh said his Blades will have their hands full on Saturday playing an Ice team that leads the WHL’s overall standings with a 29-5-2 record.

The Blades enjoy their big win on Friday night.

“It is a huge challenge,” said Marsh. “They are really a high-powered offensive team.

“We need to reset. We need to clean a few things up from a defensive standpoint and do some things off the rush. We have to get our rest and recovery tonight and be ready to go to battle.

“We have to play a Blades brand of hockey tomorrow, where you are outworking the opposition and taking care of business away from the puck. We are going to need everyone in all four lines, our six defencemen and (our goalie) making key saves to have success tomorrow.”

“Girls Rock Night” returned on Friday night

Keely Shaw, Brigette Lacquette and Emmarae Dale are saluted.

On Friday, the Saskatoon Blades brought back their traditional “Girls Rock Night.”

The Blades were unable to hold that night last season as they played an abbreviated 24-game schedule in a bubble environment at the Brandt Centre in Regina due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that has gripped the world.

With the Blades once again being able to host home games with fans this season inside a scheduled 68-game regular season, they are trying to get back to holding a number of traditional theme nights they held before the COVID-19 pandemic clamped down on North America back in March of 2020.

On Friday, the Blades had three special guests at their game in Brigette Lacquette, Keely Shaw and Emmarae Dale.

Lacquette played defence for Canada’s senior national women’s hockey team and is currently a scout for the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks.

The ceremonial faceoff of the Blades “Girls Rock Night.”

Shaw won a bronze medal in cycling at the 2020 Paralympics that were actually held in 2021 in Tokyo, Japan.

Dale just graduated from the Saskatoon Hilltops after playing linebacker for them last season. Dale is the first female to play games in the CJFL.

She is a veteran player of the Saskatoon Valkyries of the Western Women’s Canadian Football League.

The trio took part in a pre-game speaking engagement designed for all ages. They also participated in a ceremonial pre-game faceoff, where they were introduced individually and given big cheers by the 2,713 spectators in attendance.

Following those festivities, the Blades would go on to down the visiting Medicine Hat Tigers 9-2.

Pillar trade a first class move by Blades, Blazers

The Saskatoon Blades don’t mind waiting for a major roster addition, especially when a health situations needs to work itself out.

Before the WHL’s trade deadline this past Monday, the Blades acquired 19-year-old forward Josh Pillar from the Kamloops Blazers in exchange for a conditional third round selection in the 2022 WHL Prospects Draft and a conditional second round pick in the 2024 Prospects Draft.

Pillar, who stands 6-feet and weighs 179 pounds, posted 11 goals, 20 assists and a plus-four rating in 29 games with the Blazers this season. In 183 career regular season games with the Blazers, Pillar has 43 goals, 83 assists and a plus-20 rating.

He was selected in the fourth round and 127^th overall by the Minnesota Wild in the 2021 NHL Entry Draft.

At the time the trade was made, Pillar was at home in Warman, Sask., recovering from a private medical situation. As Warman is located along Saskatoon’s northeast border, management on both teams in conjunction with Pillar’s family agreed it was best for Pillar to be close to home. The Blades and Blazers did the classy thing and made this trade a reality.

Blades general manager Colin Priestner and Blazers head coach and general manager Shaun Clouston both deserve a tonne of praise for the work they put in to make this trade a reality to get Pillar to his home stomping grounds.

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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Hoping Shirley cracks pro radars again with U Sports all-stars

Collin Shirley is off to play for a U Sports all-star squad.

    Collin Shirley takes being tabbed as “the other Shirley” in Saskatoon area hockey circles with a chuckle.

    At one time, Collin was a star winger for the WHL’s Kamloops Blazers. Now in his third season as a standout winger with the University of Saskatchewan Huskies men’s hockey team, the 23-year-old’s exploits are often overshadowed by those of his 20-year-old sister, Sophie, who plays centre with the University of Wisconsin Badgers women’s hockey team in the NCAA ranks.

    This week, Collin will likely take on the role as the Shirley family member that gains the most attention. He will be in Oakville, Ont., playing for a U Sports all-star squad that will face the final group of hopefuls looking to crack Canada’s world junior team as part of festivities for the selection camp for the world junior team.

    Collin will be playing for the U Sports all-star squad for a second straight year against Canada’s world junior hopefuls.

Collin Shirley has 13 points in 16 games for the Huskies.

    The camp starts Monday and runs through to Thursday. The U Sports all-stars will face the national junior team hopefuls in exhibition contests on Wednesday and Thursday.

    The world junior hockey championships run Dec. 26 to Jan. 5 in the new year in Ostrava and Trinec in the Czech Republic.

    Back in the 2012-13 campaign, Collin played on the Team West squad that was one of the Canadian entries that took part at the world under-17 hockey challenge in Drummondville and Victoriaville, Quebec.

    Still, Collin’s exploits are often being dwarfed by those of Sophie’s.

    As a rookie with the Badgers last season, Sophie, who stands 5-foot-9, collected 20 goals and 18 assists for 38 points in 41 overall games. She also got her hands on the beautiful and shiny NCAA national championship trophy as the Badgers blanked the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers 2-0 in title game of the women’s Frozen Four tournament.

Collin Shirley is popular with the hockey community in Saskatoon and area.

    Sophie has hit bigger heights as a sophomore piling up 18 goals and 20 assists for 38 points in 20 overall games.

    She has played on Canada’s under-18 women’s team, has been a mainstay on Canada’s national women’s development team and has seen limited action with Canada senior national women’s team.

    Collin and Sophie’s youngest sister, Grace, is skating through her rookie campaign with the Badgers as an 18-year-old forward.

    In the current day, Sophie yields the majority of the attention.

    Collin has solid numbers appearing in 59 career U Sports regular season games collecting 22 goals and 27 assists for 49 points. He has four goals and nine assists for 13 points this season appearing in all of the Huskies 16 regular season games helping them post an 11-3-2 record.

Collin Shirley (#11) joined the Huskies after five seasons in the WHL.

    Still, those numbers seem small, when your younger sister is lighting up the scoreboard south of the border and is skating with Canada on the international stage.

    With all that said, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Collin is quite the accomplished hockey player and a super person with a fun sense of humour. The local product is extremely popular around the minor hockey rinks in Saskatoon and area along with Huskies sophomore defenceman Evan Fiala, who resides just outside of Saskatoon in Clavet.

    When Collin, who stands 6-foot-2 and weighs 195 pounds, joined the Huskies for the start of the 2017-18 campaign, his return was viewed as a much welcomed and anticipated homecoming.

Collin Shirley has 49 points in 59 regular season games with the Huskies.

    For five full seasons, he played out in British Columbia in the WHL from 2012 to 2017 first in Cranbrook with the Kootenay Ice and then for the Blazers.

    Over three and a half seasons of that time was spent in Kamloops. The Ice franchise proceeded to move to Winnipeg, Man., before the start of the current campaign.

    Collin appeared in 344 career WHL regular season games collecting 114 goals and 119 assists. Collin’s final two campaigns in the WHL with Kamloops were very strong.
    In 2015-16, Collin was a Blazers assistant captain and piled up 37 goals and 42 assists for 79 points in 72 regular season games.

    In 2016-17, he was the Blazers captain and collected 28 goals and 34 assists for 62 points in 70 regular season games.
    He did enough to warrant interest from the professional side of the game. 

Collin Shirley is a reliable left-winger for the Huskies.

    Knowing how tough a business professional hockey can be, Collin elected to join the Huskies and major in business studies.

    In the process, Collin joined a U Sports men’s hockey league that is often severely underrated for its very high quality hockey product.

    The U Sports men’s teams are mostly filled with former major junior players who were solid contributors on their major junior clubs and a number of those players reached star status.

    Players on U Sports men’s teams still train at an elite level. Due to the fact these teams only play games on weekends, players in U Sports are more focused at refining their skills at practice sessions during the week leading up to weekend games.

    They often have more time to refine their skills than players do in major junior or the professional levels. With the work done by U Sports players in practice sessions, you see a more polished product on the ice for games.
    Players in the U Sports game improve over the course of their careers, and are usually more ready for the professional ranks at the end of their university careers than at the end of their major junior careers. Their maturity is also a lot higher as well.

Collin Shirley had 233 points in 344 career WHL regular season games.

    Often, the experience among the players with the U Sports all-stars provides a huge challenge for the hopefuls for Canada’s world junior team to deal with. Those head-to-head contests are extremely competitive.

    With the Huskies, Collin has improved as a hockey player and is a better player now than he was with the Blazers. He is a better professional prospect now than he was when he was in major junior.
    Still, it seems NHL teams are addicted to focusing their time on youngsters. Players that haven’t kicked down the door by the end of their first three-year entry-level contract are usually cycled out of the professional game.

Collin Shirley (#11) has celebrated a number of wins with the Huskies.

    A lot of players find their careers wrap up at age 23 or 24.

    That is crazy to think about considering athletes usually hit their physical peak around age 27.

    It would be cool to see if Collin can capture the attention of even one professional scout to allow him to have a realistic shot at that level.

    Taking a chance on Collin would be much less of a gamble than the large number of players that are taken annually in the NHL Entry Draft.

    If Collin gets that chance, he might be able to on the fun front overshadow Sophie in Saskatoon and area hockey circles.

“Girls Rock Night” a home run again for Blades

The ceremonial faceoff for the Blades “Girls Rock Night.”

    The “Girls Rock Night” is still a hit out of the park for the Saskatoon Blades.

    The Blades have been holding the “Girls Rock Night” promotion for a handful of years now, and they had good mix for this year’s promotion that went with Saturday’s 4-3 shootout loss to the Kelowna Rockets.

    Before the game, the team holds a pre-game empowerment speech for various girls groups.

    A number of speakers took part in this year’s speech including NASCAR Pinty’s Series Shantel Kalika. Kalika, who is from Prince Albert, has been a star racer at the Wyant Group Raceway as part of the Saskatoon Stock Car Racing Association for a number of years too.
    Her NASCAR Dodge Challenger was on display in the concourse.

    Safety Rienna Rueve and left tackle Alyssa Funk from the WWCFL champion Saskatoon Valkyries took part in the speaking festivities.

NASCAR Pinty’s Series driver Shantel Kalika, left, received big cheers.

    The speaking festivities also included Katriana Philipenko from the University of Saskatchewan Huskies women’s basketball team and Elizabeth Salyn, Leah Bohlken, Shyan Elias and Courtney Cormack all from the University of Saskatchewan Huskies women’s hockey team.

    They all took part in a pre-game ceremonial faceoff.

    The host side had 11-year-old Taylor Hanley doing some of the public address duties as well.

    The Blades attracted 4,215 spectators for Saturday’s contest, and the representation from the various girls groups was obvious. They made some pretty good noise too, which added to the atmosphere for the night.

    Saskatoon led 3-2 until Kelowna scored the equalizer late in the third and ultimately took the contest in extra time.

    The Blades may have come up just short on the ice, but they netted a win again with their “Girls Rock Night” off the ice.

    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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