Younger Blades Come Close, But Fall Short as Older Raiders Claim W-H-L East Division Pennant

The Prince Albert Raiders are the 2024-25 W-H-L East Division regular-season pennant winners.

Lukas Dragicevic’s power play goal with 3:01 left in the third period gave P-A a 4-3 victory over the Saskatoon Blades before a standing room-only crowd of 3,264 fans at the Art Hauser Centre Saturday night. The win means the 39-23-6 Raiders, with seven 2005-born players in their line-up, are the second seed for the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs and will open a best-of-seven quarter-final series at home on Friday against the Edmonton Oil Kings. They finished the regular-season on a five-game winning streak. As for the 37-23-8 Bridge City Bunch, with only three 2005-born players and eight 2007-born players in their-line-up, they finish sixth in the Eastern Conference and will open a best-of-seven Eastern Conference quarter-final on the road in either Calgary or Medicine Hat. The Hitmen and Tigers are tied for first place in the Central Division and Eastern Conference and face reach other Sunday evening in Calgary. The winner meets the Swift Current Broncos in the Conference quarter-finals while the loser gets matched up with the Blue and Gold. Cooper Williams opened the scoring for the Blades, only to have Harrison Lodewyk, Aiden Oiring and Ty Meunier give Prince Albert a 3-1 lead going into the final five minutes of the second period. However, Hunter Laing’s power play goal just before the intermission and Hayden Harsanyi’s tally just as another man advantage ended, before the midpoint of the third period, knotted the score, setting the stage for Dragicevic’s heroics. Saskatoon out-shot the Raiders 37-32. Following are the audio highlights from CJWW’s broadcast, Les Lazaruk’s Post-Game Show interview with head coach Dan Da Silva plus the official game summary courtesy the W-H-L…..

SASKATOON Goals SASKATOON PLAYERS (plus) PRINCE ALBERT PLAYERS (minus) Per. Time  G-As1-As2 1st 11:56  25-86 2 3 25 27 86 7 10 15 19 26 2nd 16:19 PP  27-23-20 3rd 9:11  26-21-9 2 9 20 21 26 5 11 19 21 26

PRINCE ALBERT Goals PRINCE ALBERT PLAYERS (plus) SASKATOON PLAYERS (minus) Per. Time  G-As1-As2 1st 18:56  29-18-10 7 10 18 24 29 2 3 20 26 29 2nd 1:02  19-15-26 3 8 15 19 26 21 25 27 52 86 2nd 11:18  25-27 3 8 23 25 27 4 9 25 37 86 3rd 16:59 PP  3-19-10