The Raiders' 50th season logo. (Prince Albert Raiders)

By Jeff D'Andrea

Looking back on the Raiders

Raiders getting ready for 50th season brings back great memories for Mel Parenteau

Jun 11, 2020 | 2:02 PM

In the Prince Albert Raiders’ new 50^th season logo they’ll use for next season, there is a green ribbon across the bottom with the year it all began — 1971.

Mel Parenteau was on the first-ever Raiders’ side when they began playing in the SAJHL. Looking back on it, Parenteau said he was fortunate just to make the team.

The March before the Raiders held tryouts to create their debut roster, Parenteau broke his leg at a midget tournament in Swift Current. He was worried about making the Raiders, who were preparing to make their inaugural season.

“To make it worse, I had to break my leg,” Parenteau said. “And I knew the Raiders were coming up, so it took a lot of work that summer for me to prepare and to hopefully heal my leg and be ready for the tryouts.

“Then I came back, had a good camp. I was really lucky to make the team that year. It was an awesome year.”

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Junior hockey took a decades-long pause in Prince Albert after the Minto Arena fire midway through the 1961-62 season. The construction of the Prince Albert Communiplex (renamed as the Art Hauser Centre in 2005) allowed junior hockey to return to ‘Hockey Town North.’ But the Communiplex wasn’t ready at the beginning of the season. Knowing this, the Raiders played their first 10 games on the road and didn’t schedule themselves a home game until the start of December.

But even then, the Communiplex still wasn’t ready and Parenteau said the Raiders had to play their first three home games at the Kinsmen Arena.

That first home game at the small and packed Kinsmen, the Raiders skated to an 11-0 victory over the Moose Jaw Canucks. Despite the play being crammed on the small ice surface, Parenteau was still able to find a lot of ice out there.

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“That first game that we played there, I had three breakaways in that little arena,” said Parenteau, who ended up scoring on one of them. “Those are just some of the memories things that happened there. It was a real, real good year.”

Eventually on Dec. 12, 1971, the Communiplex finally opened its doors for some hockey action. Mayor Val Longworth made the first-ever ceremonial faceoff before the Raiders beat the Regina Pat Blues 9-2.

Parenteau remembers being so excited to open up the arena. This was long before the seats were added, back when the seating options for fans was a tough choice of either sitting on the hard, cold concrete slabs in the stands, or bringing in blankets and pillows to make their own seats.

The Raiders finished their first regular season with 32 wins from 44 games, to sit third place in the SAJHL standings. They beat the Weyburn Red Wings in the first round in six games, and lost out to the second-place Melville Millionaires in the semifinals.

In about half of those 50 years since he played for the Raiders, Parenteau spent 20 years with the Beardy’s Blackhawks as the team’s manager. After the Blackhawks were replaced in the Saskatchewan Midget AAA Hockey League, Parenteau said he’s working on forming an Indigenous under-18 hockey league throughout the Prairie provinces, as well as a hockey academy.

“I had some good momentum going but then all of a sudden, but then everything shut down with what I was working on — trying to get a Prairie Indigenous midget hockey league since Beardy’s is no longer in the league,” he said.

New Logo

The Raiders’ new logo they’ll use for their next season will pay homage to all the years before. The Raiders included the big 5-0 in the middle of their logo. On the bottom are seven stars, to represent the seven championships the Raiders won. The big green one is for the 1985 Memorial Cup, the two gold ones are for the WHL titles in 1985 and 2019, and the four white ones represent the Centennial Cups the Raiders won in the SJHL days (1977, 1979, 1981, 1982).

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Jeff.dandrea@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @jeff_paNOW