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Jeff D’Andrea, paNOW
HALIFAX—The best season for the Prince Albert Raiders in the past 34 years has come to an end.
The Raiders bowed out of the 2019 Memorial Cup after losing 5-2 to the Guelph Storm Tuesday at Scotiabank Centre in Halifax and were eliminated from the round robin.
The curse on WHL championship teams continues at the Memorial Cup, as they have gone 13 games without a victory at the big tournament, dating back to 2015.
The sting of defeat can make your eyes swell up, or upset your stomach. That’s fine. That’s normal.
“It sucks right now, there’s no other words,” Raiders assistant captain Parker Kelly said. “Each and every one of those guys in the room, they’re my brothers. I love ‘em. We’re champions. There’s not any other way to put it, but it sucks right now, for sure.”
But at the same time, it’s important to remember just how special the Raiders season really was.
In one year’s time, the Raiders morphed from a team in Prince Albert to Prince Albert’s team.
Fans were camping overnight at the Art Hauser Centre to desperately try to find tickets on numerous occasions, as the last 10 home postseason games were sold out. Some fans travelled to Halifax for the Memorial Cup, some to Langley, B.C., for the league finals, and some crazy fans like Lee Philipenko actually travelled to both.
That’s a far cry from just one season ago, when they posted their worst-ever average attendance of just 2,050 fans per game.
Raiders fans waited 34 years for a magical year like this, and they quickly embraced the team.
“It’s something that can’t be measured,” Raiders head coach Marc Habscheid said. “(Last year), it was announced 2,000 but some nights, there’d be 1,200. We’d come on the ice and the trainer (Duane ‘Puff’ Bartley) and I would count and there’d be one or two people in a section. But that’s okay, we had to earn their trust back.
“First and foremost, you have to be good citizens before you become good hockey players, and they were tremendous citizens for us. They cared about the town, they cared about the franchise.”
As captain of the team, Brayden Pachal is proud to have garnered the trust of the Raiders fanbase once again.
“It’s been amazing, through the tough times, they were still there,” Pachal said. “Now that we’re a winning organization, we have a few banners in the rafters again. They’re coming out and they supported us huge all season.”
The Raiders won their first WHL championship since 1985, and did so in Game 7 overtime. They also won their first playoff series in 15 years. Ian Scott scored the first and only goal by a netminder in Raiders’ history, among setting four other team records. They won 54 games, the most since the 1984-85 season and just the fourth time in team history they’ve eclipsed the 50-win mark.
“It’s amazing. We were the top team in the WHL all season long, winning the championship is a pretty tough thing to do,” Raiders forward Noah Gregor said. “Not many teams win the league in the regular season and win the championship as well.
“Small market Prince Albert hadn’t won a championship in a really long time, so put P.A. back on the map. There’s nothing but good things going forward for this organization,” he said.
Remembering the losses
Throughout the last season, four members of the Raiders family passed away. In his press conference, Habscheid made sure that their memories won’t be forgotten, and that the team will always hold them dear.
He talked about director of player personnel Ron Gunville, who passed away in December. He talked about Donn Clark, who passed away in March. Raiders prospect Adam Herold passed away last April in the Humboldt Broncos bus crash, and Habscheid’s father Nicholas also passed away earlier this season.
“Those young men in there helped me through that, they’re just like my adopted kids,” Habscheid said.