Raiders wise to focus on Game 5 of WHL Championship Series

Questionable third period calls in Game 4 left in past

An officials’ conference takes place in Game 4 of the WHL final.

PRINCE ALBERT, Sask. – Prince Albert Raiders turned the page as soon as their post-game presser on Wednesday night.

That feeling was reinforced in media interviews during an off day on Thursday.

No matter how you cut it, the Raiders are in the classic cliché “do or die” situation in their best-of-seven WHL Championship Series with the Everett Silvertips. With a 5-2 victory in Game 4 on Wednesday at the storied and historic Art Hauser Centre, the Silvertips took a commanding 3-1 lead in the series having won the last three straight contests in the set. Everett has also scored first in every game of the series.

Game 5 is slated for Friday at 7:30 p.m. local time at the Hauser. At the moment, the Raiders can only look towards the game Friday.

They can go into the contest with a key motivating factor. They do not want that game to come to a conclusion where the Silvertips are being presented the Ed Chynoweth Cup as WHL champions. If that situation materializes, the Raiders will find out one of the hardest things they will experience in sports is seeing an opponent celebrate a league championship in their own home rink and home city.

In the older era of the WHL and even into the early 2010s, teams that made the WHL final did not want to see an opponent enjoy a championship celebration on their home rink. If the Raiders prevail on Friday, they will force the series to head back to Everett for Game 6 on Sunday at 7 p.m. local time at the Angel of the Winds Arena. The last WHL final to go to a Game 6 came in 2022, when the Edmonton Oil Kings beat the Seattle Thunderbirds in six games.

In Game 4 of this year’s WHL final, frustration ensued for the Raiders and their fans as an official’s mistake snowballed on the host side. Raiders fans might not believe this, but there was a game in this year’s WHL Playoffs that snowballed worse due to an official’s mistake. That contest will be brought up a little later, but first the focus goes to the third period in Game 4 of the WHL final.

The fans first got upset when Silvertips star right-winger Carter Bear scored on the power play at the 4:24 mark of the third to put the visitors up 3-1. A replay shown in the building after the goal was scored showing the play was close to being offside on a zone entry. Before the 2023-24 campaign started, the WHL made a rule change eliminating offside plays from a coach’s challenge.

A short time later, Raiders captain Justice Christensen scored to cut the Silvertips lead to 3-2. That set the stage for the biggest controversial play of the contest.

With 11:33 remaining in the third, Raiders star centre Aiden Oiring tried to wrap the puck home at the right side of the Silvertips net. Silvertips star netminder Anders Miller made the stop, but a mad scramble ensued at the right side of the goal.

The puck bounced around a maze of skates and sticks and shot out to Raiders rookie defenceman Benett Kelly in front of the Everett net. Kelly appeared to blast home the equalizer causing the crowd at the Hauser to momentarily erupt.

The officials blew the play dead having lost sight of the puck. They disallowed the goal due to the quick whistle causing the crowd to turn irate. About two or three people ended up throwing debris on the ice.

The officials did a short video review and still held up the no goal call.

That quick whistle was a mistake, and the Raiders should have been in a tie game at that point. What fans often forget in the WHL is that the circuit is a development league for the officials as well as the players. You do run into a handful of fans in every WHL market thinking everything should be executed at an NHL level, which is great to hope for but unrealistic to expect.

On seemingly the next shift with 10:40 remaining in the third, Raiders standout sophomore Riley Boychuk appeared to fire home another equalizer. That goal was waved off as the officials correctly ruled a Raiders player had knocked a Silvertips player into Miller causing inadvertent contact that prevented the netminder from making a save.

The officials got that call right. Still, there were Raiders fans that were mad that goal didn’t count.

The snowball effect carried on.

With 9:40 remaining in the third, the Raiders suffered a bad break that didn’t have anything to do with the officials. While attempting to break out of their zone, Raiders star 20-year-old centre Aiden Oiring and Christensen both blew tires causing the puck to be turned over to Silvertips 20-year-old centre Zackary Shantz along the right boards in the Prince Albert zone.

Shantz passed the puck across the front of the Prince Albert net to linemate in 18-year-old left-winger Shea Busch. Busch popped the puck home to push the Silvertips lead out to 4-2. Matias Vanhanen proceeded to add an empty-net goal to round out the 5-2 final score in favour of the Silvertips.

This wasn’t the only game that went off the rails due to an official’s mistake. An even worse one took place earlier in the current WHL Playoffs on April 15 at the CN Centre in Prince George, B.C.

On that night, the host Prince George Cougars went into Game 4 of a Western Conference Semifinal Series against the Penticton Vees holding a 2-1 lead in that best-of-seven set. The two sides were locked in a 2-2 tie in a very entertaining contest heading into the final six minutes of the third period.

With 5:50 remaining in the third, Cougars defenceman Corbin Vaughan nailed Vees centre Ryden Evers with a shoulder to the chest bodycheck in the centre ice zone. Evers fell face first to the ice and was cut by his visor.

The officials in that game gave Vaughan a major penalty for head checking and a game misconduct. It was clear reviewing the video that no head check occurred on the play.

All of a sudden, the snowball happened. A short time later, Cougars defenceman Arsenii Anisimov cleared the puck over the glass from his own zone resulting in a delay of game penalty.

Vees captain Nolan Stevenson scored on that two-man advantage with 4:16 remaining in the third to put Penticton up 3-2. A handful of Cougars fans were so upset they threw debris on the ice.

After play resumed, a couple of other Cougars fans threw debris on the ice while play was in progress. That caused the officials to blow the play dead with 3:40 remaining in the third and give the Cougars bench a penalty due to the actions of the fans. That is a rule that rarely gets put into action, but that was the right time to call that penalty.

Vees defenceman Ethan Weber scored on that two-man advantage with 2:29 remaining in the third to push the Vees lead out to 4-2. The Cougars penalty box parade continued resulting in Vees left-winger Brady Birnie scoring third power-play goal on a two-man advantage with 51 seconds remaining in the third to round out the 5-2 final score in favour of Penticton.

That ultimately was the contest that saw the Cougars get fined $1,500 on April 17 by the WHL for inadequate security. Vaughan did not receive any further discipline for his hit on Evers. Cougars left-winger Aiden Foster was given a two-game suspension for receiving a head checking major and a game misconduct in the second period of that contest.

In both the Raiders Game 4 situation in the WHL final and the Cougars Game 4 development in their Western Conference semifinal, the fans speak from Raiders and Cougars supporters online was fairly standard regarding how bad the officials were. The men wearing the referee armbands in both games got singled out heat from some fans.

There were some Raiders fans that did not like referees Jeff Ingram and Ward Pateman who worked Game 4 of the WHL final. There were some Cougars fans that did not like referees Bryan Bourdon and Bobby Jo Love who worked Game 4 of the Western Conference Semifinal in Prince George.

You also had fans going the conspiracy theory route saying the league was trying to set up some sort of match up or help certain teams win. Every team in the WHL has at least a couple of fans like that, and they’ve kind of said those lines for at least three decades. Those types of fans have a passion in a place where you can’t change their mind.

Switching sports to the world of the NFL, there are still fans out there who believe that league did everything they could to ensure the Kansas City Chiefs won Super Bowl LVIII on February 11, 2024, because Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce was the boyfriend of icon of all music icons in Taylor Swift. There are fans that believe the NFL went out of their way to make sure “Goddess Taylor” was happy because of all the fans she brought to the viewership of the game helping the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ERS 25-22 in overtime.

None of those fans said anything when the Chiefs lost Super Bowl LIX the very next year 40-22 in an absolute drubbing handed out by the Philadelphia Eagles. That contest also happened to be attended by the President of the United States of America in Donald Trump, which marked the first time a sitting U.S. President attended the Super Bowl.

Back to the WHL, the Cougars would ultimately lose their Western Conference Semifinal Series to the Vees in six games. Going into Game 5 in Penticton, both teams left what happened in Game 4 of that series in the past and moved forward focusing on controlling what they can control.

When the puck drops for Game 5 of the WHL final on Friday at the Hauser, you can bet both the Raiders and Silvertips will have left what happened in Game 4 of their series in the past. Teams won’t always agree with what the officials call, but there is a realization they are developing and gaining experience too.

For myself, I have actually been fine for the most part with the officiating in the WHL Playoffs outside of a handful of hiccups here and there.

As for the Raiders, they are facing their biggest adversity of the campaign, and their test will be to see how they respond to that adversity. They have taken the first step on that path in focusing on the future.

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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Enjoy Bedard phenom while it is still in WHL

Pats centre a generational player in final major junior season

Connor Bedard leads the WHL with 59 points this season.

“We need to tank for Bedard.”

At some point this season, there have likely been fans of every team in the NHL that has thought, said or written that line. Even if an NHL club is occupying first place in a division, all it takes is a skid as small as two games to get at least one supporter in that club’s fan base to have that thought cross his or her mind.

If the NHL club is one of the circuit’s seven Canadian franchises, a sizable group of fans will be thinking that thought, and that group gets even larger if the Canadian club they are supporting is struggling. All of sudden, you have some fans who hope their team immediately rolls off a 50-game losing streak to have a better chance to gain the first overall selection in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft. The odds of a team winning the NHL draft lottery to get the first overall pick in the NHL Entry Draft increase the worse that club does in the regular season.

Of course, the big prize for the upcoming NHL Entry Draft for the team that is bad enough is 17-year-old phenom centre Connor Bedard, who is currently the captain of the WHL’s Regina Pats. Bedard is a true generational talent, who was the first player to be granted exceptional status to play in the WHL full time as a 15-year-old.

Now in his third season in the major junior ranks, Bedard, who stands 5-foot-10 and weighs 185 pounds, leads the WHL in goals (26), assists (33) and points (59) appearing in all of the Pats 27 regular season games to date. The North Vancouver, B.C., product, who has a plus-12 rating in the plus-minus department, was held pointless in the Pats first game of the current campaign and has proceeded to register at lead one point in each of the 26 contests that have followed.

Bedard’s latest body of work was a two-goal performance in a 5-1 Pats victory against the Cougars in Prince George on Friday that allowed the Regina side to improve to 13-12-1-1. Just 20 seconds into the second period with the Pats holding a 2-1 edge, Bedard came down the right-wing on a power play rush, toe dragged the puck closer into his body and snapped a shot between the legs of Cougars defenceman Keaton Dowhaniuk and blocker side on Cougars netminder Ty Young for his first goal of the contest.

Connor Bedard has made frequent highlight reel clips.

At the 13:12 mark of the third period, Bedard entered the Cougars zone on a rush down the left wing, stopped top of the left faceoff circle and roofed home a shot to the right corner of the Prince George net for his second tally of the contest to give the Pats a 4-1 advantage. Bedard could have had at least four more markers in that contest, but Young made some big saves to limit the Pats superstar to a two-goal night.

Bedard’s appearance drew a crowd of 6,027 spectators to the 5,971 seat CN Centre in Prince George. The attendance was by far the largest gathering the Cougars attracted all season and well above their average attendance of 2,818 spectators for the 13 home dates they’ve hosted.

The win over the Cougars completed road tour for the Pats where they played each of the five teams in the B.C. Division posting a 4-1 mark. The first two games in Vancouver and Victoria were sellouts, and the contests held in Kelowna, Kamloops and Prince George were well into standing room and well above this season’s average attendance in each centre.

That is part of the crazy that comes with Bedard playing what will inevitably be his final campaign in the major junior ranks. When the next NHL Entry Draft is held at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, from June 28 to 29, 2023, Bedard is the consensus choice to be selected first overall.

Following the first overall selection, Bedard will be signed to an NHL entry-level contract and be playing in the NHL full time as an 18-year-old. Only something unforeseen would see that chain of events not play out.

From the start of the 2022-23 campaign, NHL fans and the media that covers the NHL seem to be keeping closer tabs on what Bedard is doing with the Pats as he is eligible for the upcoming NHL Entry Draft. It is common to see Bedard’s name trend on social media lines like Twitter seemingly every third day.

Connor Bedard brings a bigger spotlight to the games he plays in.

Frequently, a Bedard highlight that results in a goal will pop up on social media and receive a large number of shares. Often, that highlight finds its way on the national broadcasts for TSN’s Sportscentre or Sportsnet’s Sports Central.

Junior hockey highlights are not a normal staple on those shows unless the world junior tournament is on, and Bedard highlights have made those shows on a regular basis this season. There are a few times NHL followers will notice another good player in games that Bedard skates in, but it often feels like an overshadow aspect is still there.

Take the Pats visit to Winnipeg to play the Ice back on November 17. The Ice, who sit first overall in the WHL with a 23-4 mark, downed the Pats 9-5 that night, and Winnipeg star 18-year-old centre Matthew Savoie had three goals, three assists and a plus-two rating in that contest.

Just 10 seconds into that game, Bedard intercepted an Ice pass at centre ice, broke into the Winnipeg zone, undressed and skated around an Ice defenceman, deked out Ice netminder Mason Beaupit and tucked home a goal to complete the highlight reel play. Bedard finished with a goal and two assists in that outing.

There were people who don’t normally follow the WHL notice that Savoie, who was the first round selection NHL Entry Draft held this past July by the Buffalo Sabres, was a pretty good player. Still, it seemed like the video from Bedard’s goal that night was shared seemingly everywhere, and Savoie’s big night didn’t get anywhere near that attention.

Another player that gets noticed quite a bit due to playing on the same team as Bedard is left-winger Tanner Howe, who turned 17-years-old on November 28. In 98 career regular season games with the Pats, Howe has 45 goals, 62 assists and a plus-nine rating. The Prince Albert product has 17 goals, 19 assists and a plus-nine rating in 26 appearances this season with the Pats.

Connor Bedard packed rinks in a tour of the B.C. Division.

Howe picked up a WHL player of the week nod for the week ending November 27 for collecting five goals and two assists in the Pats first two stops on their tour of the B.C. Division. That included posting four goals, two assists and a plus-six rating in the Pats 9-5 victory over the Royals in Victoria on November 26. Bedard had three goals, one assist and a plus-six rating in that victory.

Howe actually isn’t eligible for the NHL Entry Draft until 2024 due to his late in the year birthday. Thanks to playing with Bedard, more NHL followers are aware of Howe than they normally would be.

In the grand scheme of things, the endless hype around Bedard has caused more people than normal to pay attention to the Pats and the WHL. That attention will go away, when Bedard is no longer playing in the WHL.

Actually, the WHL will lose some attention for about the last two thirds of the month of December through the first week of January when the IIHF’s world junior hockey tournament is on. The upcoming world juniors start on December 26 and run through to January 5, 2023 in Halifax, N.S., and Moncton, N.B.

Bedard will be skating with Canada’s entry at that event and at selection camp and practices with Canada in the two weeks leading up to that tourney.

When the world juniors conclude, Bedard will jet through his final stretch in the major junior ranks. The Bedard hype train in the WHL has a finite time limit, so it would be prudent to enjoy it while it is still going on.

Connor Bedard, left, enjoys a goal celebration with the Pats.

Come next year at this time, you will likely have to play $300 or more just to get in a rink to see Bedard play in the NHL.

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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If you like what you see here, you might want to donate to the cause to keep independent media like this blog going. Should you choose to help out, feel free to click on the DONATE button in the upper right corner. Thank you for stopping in.