By Jeff D'Andrea

Former Raider captain Herrod commits to UofS

Jul 11, 2012 | 7:31 AM

Although he recently committed to the University of Saskatchewan Huskies and finished his WHL career with the Kamloops Blazers, Prince Albert will always mean a lot to Brandon Herrod.

Ever since he was 15-years-old, Herrod relocated from Meadow Lake and played his hockey PA, starting back in with the Prince Albert Mintos Midget AAA hockey club in 2006-2007.

He went on to play 314 games with the Prince Albert Raiders, second most in franchise history behind only Brett Novak (330 games with PA). He would have broken Novak’s record, but was dealt at the trade deadline and played his final 28 games with Blazers.

“It was great,” said Herrod about his time with the Raiders. “It was a tough day when I got dealt. I learned a lot there, Bruno (Campese, Raiders general manager) was really good to me, giving me a bunch of opportunities.

“I learned a lot of things there, like work ethic. I’ll use that not only in hockey from now on, but in life.”

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Herrod will have plenty of Raiders ties on the Huskies as former-Raiders defenceman in Garrett Thiessen and Kyle Aschim is eligible to return.

Herrod’s especially happy to be reuniting with former linemate Craig McCallum, who’s from around Herrod’s neck of the woods in Canoe Lake. The two became very good friends when they played a year together in 2009-2010, in which Herrod put up a career-high 37 goal season.

Throughout this year, McCallum was hassling Herrod to commit to the Huskies.

“He’s kind of been recruiting me all year,” said Herrod, who will be taking general arts and sciences to start. “It’s just nice to have guys on the team that I already know; it should be easy to fit in there.

“He’s just been bugging me to go there, he’s been texting me a few times throughout the year and we talked about it—I guess he did a good job.”

The Huskies have also been perennial winners in CIS ranks, participating in nine of the last 12 University Cup championships and will host the next two in both 2013 and 2014. Their lone championship victory, however, came in 1983.

Last year, the Huskies were 19-6-3 in the regular season, won the Canada West championships and then posted a 1-1 record at the University Cup in Fredericton, NB.

jdandrea@panow.com

Twitter: @jeff_dandrea