Newcomer Orsulak’s Goaltending Keeps Blades in Czech While Raiders Win Season Opener

With Max Hildebrand having aged out of the W-H-L after being the league’s top goaltender last season, many wondered how the Prince Albert Raiders would replace him.

On Friday night, Michal Orsulak showed that he could capably replace Hildebrand in the P-A crease as he back-stopped the Raiders to a 4-2 victory over the visiting Saskatoon Blades on the opening night of the 2025-26 regular-season. Orsulak stopped 29 of 31 shots as the Bridge City Bunch out-shot Prince Albert 31-29. A 6’4″, 220-pound product of Czechia, the 18-year-old Orsulak was key to limiting the Blue and Gold to just 1-for-7 on the power play in front of a sold-out crowd of 3,031. Aiden Oiring, Daxon Rudolph, Ty Meunier and Oli Chenier – the latter tally into an empty net, scored for the Raiders while Dominik Petr and Zach Olsen replied for the Blades, now 5-3-0 in their last eight season openers – all on the road. Overall, in their W-H-L franchise history, Saskatoon is 31-27-2 in season openers – 13-13-1 against P-A. The same two teams meet Saturday in the Bridge City Bunch’s home opener, 7 o’clock at SaskTel Centre with CJWW’s broadcast starting at 6:45 p.m. The Blue and Gold have won their last four home openers and are 37-21-1 in first home games of a season in franchise history. Following are the audio highlights from CJWW’s broadcast, Les Lazaruk’s post-game interview with head coach Dan Da Silva and the official game summary courtesy the W-H-L website…..

SASKATOON Goals SASKATOON PLAYERS (plus) PRINCE ALBERT PLAYERS (minus) Per. Time  G-As1-As2 1st 10:59 PP  82-4 3rd 9:58  9 9 26 37 41 71 5 10 17 20 22

PRINCE ALBERT Goals PRINCE ALBERT PLAYERS (plus) SASKATOON PLAYERS (minus) Per. Time  G-As1-As2 2nd 8:40  19-15-32 2 11 15 19 32 13 20 23 47 82 2nd 14:50 PP  10-23 3rd 2:26  25-28-23 6 12 23 25 28 4 19 25 37 71 3rd 18:32 EN  18-17 2 11 17 18 29 4 16 20 23 26 82