Tough decisions ahead for Blades despite strong start to season

Six months after the Saskatoon Blades lost in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Championship Series to the eventual WHL champion Moose Jaw Warriors, the team is back to its winning ways.

Despite having to say goodbye to top-scorers like Trevor Wong, Egor Sidorov, Easton Armstrong, Fraser Minten, Charlie Wright and Alexander Suzdalev, the Blades are sitting in third place in the eastern conference with a record of 11-5-1-1 on the season.

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That’s good enough for 24 points and within striking distance of the top record in the east.

It’s been one of the best stories of the young season.

“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit surprised,” said Blades general manager Colin Priestner when asked about what he thought about his team’s hot start to the year. “I was on some radio shows before the season started saying I think teams that think we’re going to be in dead last are probably underestimating our culture.”

Priestner credits the winning culture left by guys like Wong, Minten and Aidan De La Gorgendiere as a big reason as to why his club has been able to continue with their winning ways in 2024-25.

He also credits current veterans like Rowan Calvert, Ben Riche, Tyler Parr, Evan Gardner and Tanner Molendyk for stepping up and filling the roles that were left behind from players graduating onto the next level of their hockey career.

“Those things maybe added several wins to what I was predicting,” he said.

“But great coaching and a great culture can go a long way. I see us always being a good team. In the future, there’s going to be dips, and we’re not going to probably continue winning 75 per cent of our games forever. But, it’s not overly a coincidence to me that the guys who’ve been here a long time are stepping up big time because they’ve learned from the right people.”

Like Priestner mentioned, there could be some dips ahead for the team in the future despite their terrific start to the season.

Last year, the Blades went all in and that meant trading multiple prospects and multiple WHL draft picks in order to acquire high-end talent.

As a result, the Blades didn’t have a first-round pick in the 2024 WHL Prospects Draft and currently don’t have any first-rounders in 2025 or 2026. The club is also missing multiple other draft picks as a result of stacking their lineup with talent for a chance to win the WHL championship last season.

With the WHL trade deadline is less than two months away, Priestner admits there will be some tough decisions ahead for management as the club will have to look at replenishing their prospect pool.

“We have decisions we have to make. Certainly our draft pick cupboard is very bare going forward. That’s not a surprise. We’ve been kind of one of those teams that every good player that has hit the market over the last three to eight seasons, we’ve been in on,” Priestner said.

“When you acquire a player like Minten and you give up a couple first-round draft picks – which we hadn’t really done in the past – you’re going to have to recoup those at some point. So there will be a lot of hard decisions on our hands over the next month and this group is really making it a much harder decision than I thought it would have been two months ago.

“We’ll continue to go along here and see where we stand and not just where we stand in standings, but we also have to make sure the health of our organization long-term is strong. So we don’t really want to have years where we have no first, no seconds, no thirds. That’s are really tough in the western league to overcome when eventually that draft class is going to make up probably 20 per cent of your league. We have to be really cognizant of that.”

While big decisions will have to be made in the coming months, Priestner is particularly happy with what he’s seen from younger players who are ready at the door or will soon be knocking.

“This 2008 group that we have now – which is our 16-year-old’s – we have one player on kind of a historic pace as a 16-year-old and that’s Cooper Williams,” he said. “Zach Olsen’s been injured, but he was as part of that kind of dynamic duo, and we have seven or eight other signed guys from that draft class that we think are all very good players.”

Williams has 17 points in 18 games, while Olsen had six points in 13 games prior to his injury.

The Blades return to home after their B.C. road trip tonight to welcome the Edmonton Oil Kings.