The Saskatoon Blades threw the first punch Friday night to open Western Hockey League playoffs against the Edmonton Oil Kings.<\/p>\n
On the road, the Blades controlled the puck at Rogers Place in Edmonton to earn a 3-2 victory in Game 1 of their first round playoff series.<\/p>\n
Read more:<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s game marked the first post-season meeting between the Blades and Oil Kings since the latter\u2019s reintroduction to the WHL in 2007 and the first meeting between Saskatoon and Edmonton WHL squads since 1971.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a statement start to the series for the sixth-seeded Blades, who trailed the Oil Kings by 13 points in the standings at the end of the regular season.<\/p>\n
The physicality was on display early with Saskatoon\u2019s Gavin Clark and Edmonton\u2019s Matt Williams dropping the gloves for a short, but spirited tilt late in the first period.<\/p>\n
Shortly after, Blades forward Hunter Laing was hooked after receiving a pass in tight with the officials calling a penalty shot for Saskatoon with 4:18 left in the first.<\/p>\n
Laing made no mistake on the penalty shot, putting the shot past Edmonton\u2019s Parker Snell for the game\u2019s opening goal.<\/p>\n
Edmonton hit back a little over five minutes in the second period with Blades forward Triston Mitchell-McElhone in the penalty box for tripping.<\/p>\n
On the power play, Saskatoon product Kayden Stroeder ripped a wrist shot from the point to tie the game at 1-1.<\/p>\n
The Blades needed a little over three minutes to net their own power play goal in the second period, with captain Tyler Parr ripping a wrist shot for the 2-1 lead.<\/p>\n
Blades forward Hayden Harsanyi added a bit of insurance 6:17 into the third period shortly after a Saskatoon man advantage, curling the puck and firing the 3-1 goal past Snell.<\/p>\n
Edmonton made it interesting late with Saskatoon goaltender Evan Gardner knocking a puck into his own net off a Landon Hanson shorthanded shot, but the Blades were able to wind down the clock to secure the Game 1 win.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s victory marks Saskatoon\u2019s first Game 1 playoff victory since 2024.<\/p>\n
Gardner was tested in the first period with nine shots against, eventually making 19 saves on the night to secure his 11th career playoff victory in a Blades jersey.<\/p>\n
Saskatoon will look to go up 2-0 in the best-of-seven series on Sunday afternoon with a 2 p.m. puck drop at Rogers Place in Edmonton.<\/p>\n
Read more:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Saskatoon Blades threw the first punch Friday night to open Western Hockey League playoffs against the Edmonton…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-565982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}