Blades facing life after Nolan Maier in 2022-23 WHL season

Colin Priestner was having flashbacks during the Saskatoon Blades’ pre-season.

For the first time since the fall of 2017, someone other than Nolan Maier will be between the pipes for the Blades this season. But Priestner — the Blades’ general manager — couldn’t help but see Maier during camp.

“One of our two goalies who are going to be on the team this year was wearing (Maier’s) gear because his was late arriving,” a chuckling Priestner told The Green Zone on Wednesday. “It was funny watching him throughout the pre-season. It gives you a feeling of great comfort watching a goalie in those pads.

“That’s going to be a big change for our club after Nolan set the all-time record in the WHL last year for most wins in a career and (now he’s) on to the next chapter. Hopefully, he imparted some really good wisdom and confidence to the new guys.”

In April, Maier won his 121st career regular-season game to set a WHL record. He added one more victory before the end of the campaign, his final year of junior eligibility.

This season, barring a trade, Ethan Chadwick or Austin Elliott will be the Blades’ starter.

“Anytime you go from a goalie like (Maier) to any other goalie, there’s going to be a bit of a dropoff,” Priestner admitted. “But I think one thing in our favour there is Nolan, despite his penchant for some unbelievably timely and fantastic athletic saves, was never a .920 save percentage goalie.

“He’d have his weaker goals here and there like every goalie does, but we need to replace a .910 save percentage, not a .930 or something like that. We don’t need our guys to come in and be Nolan. We need good .900 goaltending from both of them — and I think Chadwick and Elliott are both fully capable of exceeding that.”

Priestner doesn’t believe the goalies will have to steal games this season, noting they’ll get help from a deep defence corps and plenty of offence up front.

The forwards include veterans like Brandon Lisowsky, Trevor Wong, Josh Pillar, Egor Sidorov and Jayden Wiens. The Blades traded last season’s leading scorer, Kyle Crnkovic, to the Seattle Thunderbirds in the off-season, but got Conner Roulette in return — a young man whom Priestner calls “a special player.”

“I think goal-scoring depth is going to be a focal point for us,” Priestner said. “We have a ton of goals coming back on our team, whether they scored on other teams last year like Roulette or if they scored for us.”

The D corps is led by captain Aidan De La Gorgendiere and other veterans such as Charlie Wright, Ben Saunderson and Tanner Molendyk, who’s a potential first-round NHL draft pick.

The Blades have 19 returnees from last season, so the GM isn’t concerned about leadership. A team that was the second-youngest on average in the WHL last season can use that experience to move up the standings this season.

“Last year we lost eight players going into that season and had a new coach (Brennan Sonne) that we hired in July,” Priestner said. “Now we have a coach who’s been here a full year (and) he’s had a full year to prepare. Our systems are going to be way better earlier because the guys know them already.

“My expectations are that we were a very good young team last year but I didn’t think we were a great team, especially in the playoffs. I thought we were a bit small, which we addressed with some moves here (in the off-season) … Our expectation is to try and go from good to great here and to win a banner is our goal.

“Certainly, there’ll be questions about our goaltending. If both guys are unproven, obviously they’ve got to show what they can do, but I believe that we should be contending to win every night.”