That’s just Bananas

Battle-hardened Blades romp over Raiders 6-1

The Blades are all smiles after taking a 4-0 first period lead.

Facing a tough stretch of foes has done the Saskatoon Blades good.

The Blades showed they’re battle hardened from the strength of their recent schedule.

After constantly playing the WHL’s top teams since returning from their Christmas break, the Blades faced off on Friday against their archrivals in the Prince Albert Raiders, who are going sitting on the outside looking in with regards to the WHL playoff picture in going through reload/rebuild campaign.

The Saskatoon side, playing under the nickname “Bananas” for one night as part of a comedic promotion, romped past the Raiders 6-1 to the delight of most of the 4,090 spectators in attendance outside of the healthy contingent of Prince Albert supporters.

Tanner Molendyk scored the Blades first goal on Friday.

In 12 games since returning from the WHL’s Christmas break, the Blades, who are still rated eighth in the latest CHL Top 10 Rankings, have posted a 4-4-3-1 mark. That stretch started with a win over the Raiders and was closed off with another win over the Raiders.

During the 10 games in the middle, the Blades faced the Winnipeg Ice twice, the Red Deer Rebels once, the Seattle Thunderbirds once and the Portland Winterhawks once. Those four clubs sit in the top four of the WHL’s overall standings.

Saskatoon also encountered the Moose Jaw Warriors, who sit sixth in the overall standings, twice and the Calgary Hitmen, who are ninth in the overall standings, once. The Blades also took on the Swift Current Broncos once and the Regina Pats once, when those two clubs were heating up.

Mikhail Volotovskii scored twice for the Blades on Friday.

In most of those setbacks against those stronger foes, the Blades played well and were usually one or two plays or breaks from pulling out a win. Their level of play that they had against those clubs didn’t drop when it came time to play at home against the Raiders on Friday. Saskatoon got rolling quickly and the visitors were never able to recover.

Just 41 seconds into the contest, the Blades broke through first on the scoreboard as highly touted NHL Entry Draft prospect and defenceman Tanner Molendyk fired home a point shot through a screen.

The hosts pushed their advantage out to 2-0 just over six minutes later scoring on the power play. After winning an offensive zone faceoff, Blades Belarusian import right-winger Egor Sidorov drove to the net and put a shot on goal that was stopped causing a net scramble. Blades star right-winger Brandon Lisowsky was able to push the loose puck into the Prince Albert goal to create the two-goal edge.

Egor Sidorov had a goal and an assist for the Blades.

Before the opening frame ended, Blades sophomore 17-year-old centre Mikhail Volotovskii scored a pair of goals 28 seconds apart from each other to give the Blades a 4-0 advantage.

The Raiders proceeded to pull their starting netminder Max Hildebrand after the Blades fourth tally. Hildebrand turned away 5-of-9 shots sent his way to take the loss in goal for the Raiders (15-25-3). Import Belurusian Tikhon Chaika played the rest of the way in relief turning away 19-of-21 shots sent his way.

Just two minutes into the second, the Blades continued to roll entering the Prince Albert zone on a two-on-one break. Saskatoon star left-winger Conner Roulette charged down the left wing and fed a pass across the front of the Prince Albert goal to Sidorov, who popped home his 25^th goal of the season to increase the Blades edge to 5-0.

Sloan Stanick (#23) scored the Raiders lone goal on Friday.

The Raiders finally broke through on the scoreboard offensively at the 9:15 mark of the second period, when star left-winger Sloan Stanick slipped a loose puck home at the right side of the Saskatoon goal to cut the Blades edge to 5-1. Stanick’s goal came just as a Prince Albert power play expired.

With 4:18 remaining in the second, Raiders overage centre Keaton Sorensen took a double minor penalty for high-sticking, which will trigger an automatic review by the WHL office for a possible suspension.

During the first half of that power-play chance, the Blades restored their five-goal edge as centre Jordan Keller wired home a goal from the right slot to make the score sit at 6-1 in favour of the host side. 

Aidan De La Gorgendiere had two assists for the Blades.

The Blades proceeded to cruise from there and shut things down defensively to allow the 6-1 score to hold up as the game’s final outcome.

Ethan Chadwick stopped 17 shots to pick up the win in goal for the Blades, who improved to 28-9-3-1 to sit third overall in the Eastern Conference and fifth in the overall WHL standings.

In Friday’s romp, defenceman Ben Saunderson, captain Aidan De La Gorgendiere, right-winger Vaughn Watterodt and Roulette all picked up two assists each for the Blades. 

Molendyk and Sidorov each had assists to go along with their goals to account for respective two-point nights.

The Blades celebrate their victory on Friday night.

The Blades have won all five of their head-to-head encounters with the Raiders this season outscoring the Prince Albert side 25-5 along the way. The two sides go at it again on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Art Hauser Centre in Prince Albert.

That contest will start a stretch where the Blades will play five straight games on the road.

Going forward, the Blades need to aim to keep their level of play high on a consistent basis. That will get them ready for the time they face teams that sit at or near the top of the WHL standings once again.

NOTES THAT ARE BANANAS – For the second straight year, the Blades rebranded themselves as the Saskatoon Bananas for one game as comedic promotion. 

Mikhail Volotovskii (#17) gives a stick to the crowd at game’s end.

Last year since they played a regular season game on April 1 which is April Fool’s Day, they elected to play that night at the SaskTel Centre as the Bananas in downing the Moose Jaw Warriors 4-1. With Friday’s 6-1 victory over the Raiders in the books, the Blades are 2-0 in games which they take the ice as the Bananas.

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Blades go Bananas, wipe out Warriors 4-1

Egor Sidorov sets to make a toe-drag move.

Head coach Brennan Sonne said his Saskatoon Blades put together a performance they need to duplicate.

On Friday night playing before 3,743 spectators at the SaskTel Centre, the host Blades downed the visiting Moose Jaw Warriors 4-1 playing a fairly crisp WHL regular season contest. The win helped ease the sting of recent struggles for the Blades.

Entering Friday’s game, the Blades had won just one of their previous five outings. In their previous three contests, the Blades downed the visiting Regina Pats 3-1 on March 25, got drubbed 7-0 by the Warriors in Moose Jaw one night later and fell 3-2 to the Pats in Regina last Wednesday.

“Regina at home we played really well and really hard,” said Sonne. “We got too high after the win and weren’t ready to play the next night.

Tristen Robins had a goal and an assist on Friday.

“We stink in Moose Jaw and then in Regina we stink again. Tonight, the whole focus was about our competitive nature, our battle and our compete. Without question to a man, every guy in that room brought that tonight.

“I’m very proud of them. Now, we have to learn the lesson we learned last week, where we have to turn the page and be ready for a big one tomorrow.”

The Blades and Warriors are playing lots of big games down the stretch as they are battling for fourth place in the WHL’s Eastern Conference and home ice advantage in a first round playoff series.

With the win, the Blades improved to 35-24-3-1 to sit one point behind the Warriors, who fell to 35-23-3-2, for fourth place in the Eastern Conference. Saskatoon took the season series between the two sides winning six out of eight head-to-head encounters, if that tiebreaker comes into play.

Kyle Crnkovic scored a goal on Friday.

Both the Blades and Warriors have five games remaining on their respective regular season schedules.

The Blades continue their push for that fourth place spot on Saturday when they host the 31-25-3-2 Brandon Wheat Kings (7 p.m., SaskTel Centre).

The Warriors resume their quest to hold on to that fourth place position on Saturday when they return home to host the WHL leading Winnipeg Ice (7 p.m., Mosaic Place).

“It would be massive,” said Blades star overage captain Tristen Robins about what it would mean to get home ice advantage for the first round of the playoffs. “That is what we are pushing for right now.

“That is really what is on our mind. To get the first two games at home with pretty much a sold out building would make a world of difference compared to a Tuesday or Wednesday game with half the stands full.”

There were some different sights at Friday’s Blades game.

As for Friday’s battle between the Blades and Warriors, the two clubs skated before an upbeat crowd. Since Friday was April Fool’s Day, the Blades made an announcement early in the morning they would have a new team nickname and play Friday’s contest as the Saskatoon Bananas.

The Blades switched out artwork on their team website and social media lines in the very early hours of Friday morning displaying a new Saskatoon Bananas logo. The team ran ads on local radio all day on Friday advertising the game as the Saskatoon Bananas taking on the Moose Jaw Warriors.

When fans arrived at the SaskTel Centre, they discovered the local WHL squad went the extra mile and was playing in special Saskatoon Bananas jerseys. The jerseys were nearly identical to the Blades popular alternate gold Pac-Man jerseys just with the logo changed.

The national anthem was sung by someone in a banana costume.

The team also sported game socks with banana logos on them and banana team decals on the helmets.

All sorts of Saskatoon Bananas merchandise was sold for the game as well as jerseys. During the contest itself, the scoreboard showed off graphics for Saskatoon Bananas cheers.

The young ladies that are part of the Blades Motion Fitness Blue Crew all wore banana costumes.

The changes had the adults in the crowd chuckling and smiling, and the children the age of 12 got excitedly right into everything comparable to a post-Halloween sugar rush with cheers of “Go Bananas Go.”

As for the game itself, the teams played through a tight checking opening frame where the Blades held an 8-5 edge in shots on goal.

The Blades Motion Fitness Blue Crew wore banana costumes.

The Blades had a good scoring chance near the end of the frame thanks to some strong work by left-winger Vaughn Watterodt. Watterodt took the puck off a Warriors defenceman in the right corner of the Moose Jaw zone.

After the steal, Watterodt passed the puck to rookie import right-winger Egor Sidorov, who was alone in front of the Moose Jaw net. Sidorov put a backhand shot wide of the net.

The Blades came out with all sorts of pressure in the second period. Early in the frame, overage captain Tristen Robins had a point chance to try on score on a hard rush to the net, but he was turned away by Warriors overage star netminder Carl Tetachuk.

At the 8:26 mark of the frame, Robins broke through on the scoreboard blasting home a power-play goal from the left slot to give the Blades a 1-0 lead.

Eric Alarie had the Warriors lone goal on Friday.

Just under four minutes later, Warriors veteran left-winger Eric Alarie got loose on a breakaway towards the Saskatoon net, and he snapped home the equalizer to tie things up at 1-1.

“We weren’t worried at all,” said Robins. “It was just a little miscommunication that happened there in that period to give them that goal.

“We tightened things up. We stuck to our game plan.”

Near the end of the second, the Blades ended up having a two-man advantage for 1:35, but they weren’t able to net a go-ahead tally.

The Blades held a 19-4 edge in shots on goal for the second period, but the two sides were tied on the scoreboard 1-1.

Warriors G Carl Tetachuk makes one of his 36 saves.

At the 8:04 mark of the third, the Blades jumped back in front 2-1 scoring on a three-on-one break. Blades sophomore defenceman Ben Saunderson had the puck in his own zone, saw the Warriors were making a line change and hit Sidorov on a stretch pass right before the Moose Jaw blue-line to start the three-on-one break.

Sidorov entered the Moose Jaw zone down the right wing, cut across the middle of the ice and sniped home his 20^th goal of the season.

On the scoring play, Warriors defenceman Lucas Brenton drove Watterodt into Tetachuk. A short scrum ensued afterwards.

The officials gave Watterodt a minor infraction for goaltender interference but still allowed Sidorov’s goal ruling Watterodt’s infraction happened after the tally.

Nolan Maier earned his 119th career regular season win.

With 5:24 remaining in the third, Sidorov wired home a shot from the left slot for his second tally of the contest to increase the Blades advantage to 3-1.

Just 22 seconds later, Robins set up star left-winger Kyle Crnkovic for his 37^th goal of the season to round out the 4-1 final in the Blades favour.

Sonne said it is key when players like Sidorov, who is still 17-years-old, can have big games, especially when the injury bug has taken a big bite out of the Blades.

Aidan De La Gorgendiere, who is the Blades regular captain, was lost for the rest of the current campaign due to season ending shoulder surgery. Centres Trevor Wong, Jayden Wiens, Lukas Hansen, right-winger Noah Boyko and defenceman Rhett Rhinehart were all out with upper body injuries. Utility player Spencer Shugrue was recently added to the injury list as being out day to day with a lower body injury.

The Blades celebrate Egor Sidorov’s second goal of the night.

“We are missing a lot of guys,” said Sonne. “Guys are getting more ice time in different roles or bigger expanded roles.

“For him (Sidorov) to step up and get a couple tonight was really important.”

Maier stopped 18 shots to pick up the win in goal for the Blades. Tetachuk turned away 36 shots to take the setback in net for the Warriors.

On a personal front, Maier earned his 119^th career regular season win with the Blades victory on Friday. The Yorkton, Sask., product equals Jordan Papirny for second on the WHL’s all-time regular season career wins list.

Papirny picked up his 119 career regular season wins playing five seasons in the WHL from 2012 to 2017 with the Brandon Wheat Kings and the Swift Current Broncos.

Young fans show off a sign to support Blades G Nolan Maier.

Maier needs one more win to equal the WHL record for career regular season victories of 120 held jointly by Corey Hirsch and Tyson Sexsmith.

Hirsch picked up his 120 victories playing four seasons with the Kamloops Blazers from 1988 to 1992. Sexsmith collected his 120 wins over five seasons with the Vancouver Giants from 2005 to 2009. He also had one non-decision relief appearance for the Medicine Hat Tigers late in the 2004-05 campaign.

Going forward, Sonne said his Blades are gunning for home ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs, and the next step in working towards that spot is having another good game on Saturday, when the Wheat Kings come to town.

“We want it bad,” said Sonne. “At the same time, we can’t get too focused on what this team is doing or that team is doing.

The Blades celebrate their win on Friday.

“We have to take care of what we are doing next, our next shift, which is Brandon tomorrow. We have to turn the page, and the chips will fall where they may so long as we bring what we need to bring.”

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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