“I still think we deserved to win that game (Game 7) but that’s coming from my perspective.”
Rowan Calvert couldn’t bear to watch the 2024 Western Hockey League final, even though he was there in person.
“It sucked to be in Moose Jaw when (the Moose Jaw Warriors) swept, to have to go to the game,” admits Calvert, whose Saskatoon Blades will open a new WHL season Friday in Swift Current against the Broncos.
“To be honest, I didn’t want to go to the game, but I had to be there because my brother’s on the team. That was really what stung.”
Adding insult to injured ego, Rowan wasn’t too thrilled when the Ed Chynoweth Cup made an appearance at his family’s home in Moose Jaw, courtesy of the aforementioned Atley.
“He brought the cup to the house and I told him, ‘Don’t bring it to the house’ — I wasn’t too happy about that, honestly,” recalled Rowan Calvert.
“That’s kind of what I felt, being so close (to winning but losing the way the Blades did) … I still think we deserved to win that game (Game 7) but that’s coming from my perspective. It’s definitely fuelled me and it’s something I will think about for a long, long time.”
For now, the focus is on Friday.
It’s a new season with a new-look team and a new head coach.
Ready or not, here they come.
“We’re getting there — it’s a work in progress but we’re getting there,” said DaSilva, when asked about his team’s readiness for the opening weekend.
“We’ve had steps every single day. We’re trying to get better every day and we’re building up to be ready for Friday night and we’re getting there.”
The Blades wrapped up the pre-season with a pair of overtime games against the rival Prince Albert Raiders. They finished the exhibition slate with a 1-3-1 record.
“We had to show our resilience. We had to show how we handle leads and learn from lessons as to how to correctly handle those leads in third periods, and on the flip side Saturday, how to come back when facing an adverse situation where they score to go up by one with 90 seconds left — how do you handle that?
“We had some really good examples of what can happen in this league and how you have to be ready to handle those situations. Great games. It was a lot of fun. It had regular-season intensity, which is also good for the players to experience that.”
The Blades’ motto is simple. It’s about “getting better every day.”
“That’s truly the mindset we need to be in,” added DaSilva. “It’s a very narrow focus on just getting better every day, trusting that process, learning our lessons and moving on and getting better every single day.
“Our expectations are that we get better every day and that we exceed expectations from the outside. We want to be better than people think we’re going to be and we’re going to do that by competing and working and really, really hard to play against.”
The fifth-year Blades defenceman is part of a leadership group on a team that will emphasize team defence and score by committee.
“We had a few games to clean up as best we could,” said Saunderson.
“It’s going to be a different way of winning. We had a lot of skill, older guys, last year, and sometimes we would get wins when we’re not playing our best hockey. It’s going to need our full effort every night to win.”
That feeling, Saunderson admits, is not great, but nobody’s hanging their head.
“We weren’t mad with our efforts — kind of the focus is that it’s hockey,” he said. “Sometimes bounces don’t go your way. Game 7 OT, I don’t think anybody’s hanging their head. Going into this year, it’s definitely something that will pop into our heads once in a while but I don’t think it’s something guys are dreading on.”
Calvert, for one, isn’t nervous about the new season.
“Every game’s just a skate, right? It’s just an organized skate,” he explained. “That’s the way I like to think about it. If I think too much about the game, it becomes something bigger than the game. We played it when we were kids and it’s still just a game. I’m just excited to go out there and play with my buddies.”
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