Redden on the Raiders: High-flying Raiders open road trip with a win
It was a lot of fun having Prince Albert native Allan Bristowe with me on the air in Prince George Wednesday night.
One thing he continued to bring up is how shocked he was at the style of play employed by Marc Habscheid and Jeff Truitt in contrast to their stingy Kelowna teams of the mid-2000s.
When Allan asked Truitt during the postgame show about the changing styles, he said it was all about personnel.
“Back in the Kelowna days, we had a group that played defensively, and we didn’t have a lot of stars. The year that we won the Memorial Cup, Randall Gelech was our top scorer with 49 points. I remember at the tournament, Maxime Talbot who I had at the World Juniors [the future NHLer was then with the Gatineau Olympiques], he came over at the practice rink to chat. He said, ‘your top scorer has 49 points, we’ve got guys with 52 goals.’ And then he gave me a little pat on the back and said see you later. My mindset was ‘can you defend?’ We knew we had a team that could defend, and usually one or two goals did it. That’s how we won, based on that team,” explained Truitt.