By Jeff D'Andrea

Raiders ready for Oil Kings; Morrissey and Draisaitl receive WHL awards

Mar 20, 2014 | 6:09 PM

Shortly after the Prince Albert Raiders beat the Red Deer Rebels 5-3 Tuesday in a tiebreaker to qualify for the playoffs, the team took to Twitter shortly after the got back to the dressing room to show their excitement.

Some thanked fans for their support after they showed up in groves at the Ches Leach Lounge to watch the game.

Others were just happy to get to the playoffs and play against the Edmonton Oil Kings in the first round.

But when Matteo Gennaro logged into his Twitter, he was the most excited as to where the playoffs would start.

Gennaro is from Edmonton’s northern suburb of St. Albert, and grew up watching the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers play in Rexall Place, the same ice surface the Oil Kings play.

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“I’ve always been growing up and watched the Edmonton Oilers play, and it’s pretty surreal to play in a rink like that,” said the 16-year-old rookie forward in a phone interview Thursday. “Watching all these NHL players playing, I’m sure it will be quite the feeling when I’m out there, playing in a playoff, best-of-seven series against the Edmonton Oil Kings.”

Gennaro is one of six players on the team from the Greater Edmonton Area, all of whom will surely have friends and family watching from the Rexall stands. Both Brendan Guhle and Darcy Zaharichuk are from eastern suburb Sherwood Park, Jayden Hart is from nearby Spruce Grove and Dakota Conroy is from Edmonton proper.

“There’s a lot of guys from the Edmonton area on our team, so I know there’s a lot of excitement to start the playoffs there,” said Conroy, the 19-year-old forward. “Me personally, I always like to play there. You always have a wide variety of family and friends who are out to watch the games.

“They push you that little bit extra to give it your all and everybody’s watching you. Personally, I’m really excited to start. I’ve never had any problems or nervousness or anything like that playing there, if anything, I just get a little more excitement out of it.”

The location isn’t the only thing that is getting Conroy excited. The Raiders are entering the playoffs with a ton of momentum, winning six of their last eight games and Conroy is a big reason why. The 19-year-old forward has five goals and 15 points in the nine games he’s played in March.

His two linemates, Leon Draisaitl and Collin Valcourt, have both been named as WHL Player of the Week in March. Draisaitl (seven goals, 21 points in his last 10 games) got that honour March 3-9, and Valcourt (seven goals, 11 points in his last seven games) March 10-16.

“I’ve always been kind of confident this season, we’re on a great line and I feel like we’re one of the best lines in the league when we pull it together,” said Conroy. “There’s some proof in that. There’s some times where we haven’t been that great, but we’ve cleaned that up.

“Lately, we’ve been on fire and if we can just keep that ball rolling, I don’t think we have much to worry about.”

Conroy was also very quick to point out the Raiders have gotten very key contributions from their other lines as well. He highlighted the second line including Reid Gardiner, Calder Brooks and the red-hot Jayden Hart has three goals and five points in the last two games for the Raiders, both do-or-die games.

As well as the Raiders have rallied late in the season to get to the playoffs, they will have to play the Oil Kings, who have been a notorious power house in the WHL in recent years. They’ve made the WHL finals the last two seasons, winning the Ed Chynoweth Cup in 2012 and were the runners-up to the Portland Winterhawks last season.

They’ve finished in first place in all of the last three seasons, having won at least 50 games in each of those seasons.

But the Raiders have at least been able to have moderate success against them. Despite the Oil Kings’ dominant recent success, the Raiders had a 2-2 season series record against them this year, and 3-0-1 head-to-head record last season.

“I feel like we have to push the pace right off the beginnings of the games,” said Gennaro. “They’re a very skilled team and they know how to score.

“It’s been proven, they’ve had a couple games when where they’ve blown us out but there’s been games where we didn’t stand back and we just played our game and took it to them. We ended up winning those guys.”

Games 1 and 2 will be in Edmonton Saturday and Sunday, with Games 3 and 4 will be at the Art Hauser Centre on Tuesday and Wednesday.

End of Year Awards

Two Raiders picked up some late season hardware this year in Josh Morrissey and Leon Draisaitl.

Both Morrissey and Draisaitl were named to the First All-Star Team in the WHL Eastern Conference, while Morrissey was also named the WHL Eastern Conference Defenceman of the Year.

Last year, Morrissey received the WHL Scholastic Award and Draisaitl was the WHL Eastern Conference Rookie of the Year.

jdandrea@panow.com

On Twitter: @jeff_dandrea