Saskatoon Blades seeing immediate production out of crop of rookies, young guns

Colten Worthington’s first career WHL goal on Saturday night was the payoff of years of hard work.

Following a cup of coffee with the Saskatoon Blades last season, he put the final nail in the coffin of a 9-3 victory on home ice over the Swift Current Broncos.

“I try to make sure I do all the little things right,” said Worthington. “From doing that I feel like I do belong here, because I can keep on getting better.”

It was a moment that not one, not two, but four Blades rookies got to experience over the opening weekend of the 2024-25 WHL season.

The scoring barrage began with Kohen Lodge’s season-opening goal assisted by Lochlan Tetarenko and Cooper Williams, which marked the first WHL point for all three players.

That lead to Williams’ own first tally one night later, lifting the roof off SaskTel Centre.

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Despite being one of the WHL’s youngest teams this year, the Blades were led by standout performances by a swath of rookies including Brayden Klimpke, Vlastimil Blazek and second-year forward Willy James getting his first career junior goal.

2:05 Former Saskatoon Blades captain Wong taking the leap to U Sports with U Sask. Huskies

Sweeping both of their games against Swift Current, it was an encouraging sign for Blades head coach Dan DaSilva moving forward.

“Trust equals ice time for me,” said DaSilva. “If I can trust you, I can keep putting you over the boards. They’ve done a really good job adhering to the systems and obviously helping offensively, which we didn’t expect at this point right away. But I’m very happy with it, I’ll take it.”

It is a small sample size for Saskatoon, who will be back on the ice this Saturday following a week-long break against the visiting Brandon Wheat Kings.

It will lead to seeing what the team’s crop of young guns will have in store for a second act, a wave of scoring which Williams isn’t ready to see stop anytime soon.

“Most teams are probably expecting us to be weaker this year compared to last year,” said Williams. “It’s just proving everyone wrong, going in and trying to win those bigger games against the better teams.”

The Blades and Wheat Kings will renew their rivalry for the first time this season on Saturday night at 7:00 p.m. at SaskTel Centre.