At the final buzzer last season, skating off the ice for the final time as a member of the Saskatoon Blades, Ben Saunderson knew exactly who should succeed him as team captain.
It’s a position he felt alternate captain Tyler Parr would be easily suited for.
“This guy was a tremendous leader for us this year,” Saunderson told media following locker clean-out on April 3. “A great voice in the dressing room, he goes out there and works his butt off every single night. (Parr), he’s an unbelievable leader and I think he will have no problem fitting in.”
On Thursday morning, the Blades made that transition official, voting in Parr as the 64th captain in franchise history.
Entering his fifth year with the franchise, Parr has been a staple of the team’s forward core, dressing for nearly 250 career WHL games, all wearing Saskatoon colours.
Now, the captaincy has been stitched onto that same jersey as he looks to lead the Blades like the captains before him at SaskTel Centre.
“I can’t even put it into words, honestly,” Parr said. “The captains I’ve been with in the past (like) Aidan De La Gorgendiere, Trevor Wong, (Saunderson), just some of my closest friends. Guys who have taught me a lot over the years. To try to be one of those guys to some of the younger guys on this team is a huge honour.”
Like the previous year, when former captain Wong announced the Blades captaincy to Saunderson, it was the same scene on Thursday, with Saunderson making the presentation to Parr in person inside the Blades locker room.
Watching on at the transfer of leadership, Blades head coach Dan DaSilva said Parr is the right choice to help lead the way over their 68-game schedule.
“I think the captain is very fitting,” DaSilva said. “It’s who I would have picked if I would have got to make a vote. A five-year guy, a guy that’s been here as long as I have. I refer to him as a ‘day one-er’ for me; we both arrived on the same day and started our Blades careers on the same day. It’s very special for me that way to have Tyler lead this group into battle every night.”
Fellow fifth-year forward Rowan Calvert was the only other Blade to receive captain votes, as he was named one of three alternate captains this season for Saskatoon.
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The Blades will be relying on the duo’s leadership in their opening series of the 2025-26 WHL season, starting Friday night with a visit to the Prince Albert Raiders.
It will be a rematch of last year’s regular-season finale, which saw the Blades fall 4-3 on March 22 to see the Raiders snag first place in the East Division and second place overall in the conference standings.
“We slid from (second) to (sixth place) with one game,” Calvert said. “Just the little things like that, it’s so tight in this league and every team is good. We have to bring our best, we have to be detailed and we have to be focused. It just shows us where we need to be and reminds us of who we need to be.”
Ahead of Friday’s season opener at the Art Hauser Centre, the Raiders will be raising that East Division banner with the Blades watching on.
Named an alternate captain for the first time, along with forward Hunter Laing, who is currently away at NHL training camp with the Calgary Flames, defenceman Brayden Klimpke said the pregame ceremonies in Prince Albert will add some motivation ahead of puck drop.
“That will light a fire in our room, for sure,” Klimpke said. “We thought we should have been there. It was close, but we’re coming for it this year.”
After several high-profile trades last season that saw stars like Tanner Molendyk, Brandon Lisowsky and Ben Riche dealt at the WHL trade deadline, the Blades finished the season with a 37-23-8 record to earn the sixth seed in the conference.
Saskatoon was not able to carry its recent post-season success into its opening-round series with the Calgary Hitmen, and its 2024-25 season ended in a four-game sweep.
With some distance, Parr said the team has taken away valuable lessons from that series.
“We got some physicality, we got some skill,” Parr said. “We got kind of a mix of everything, I think that’s what Calgary had, and they brought it to us. I think we can take that into ourselves and play that way this year.”
Aside from the team’s three graduations in Saunderson, Grayden Siepmann and Tanner Scott, the Blades lost a handful of players over the off-season in trades, including forwards Willy James and Hudson Kibblewhite, as well as defenceman Morgan Tastad.
In their place this year, Saskatoon has added overage forward Dominik Petr from the Brandon Wheat Kings and veteran defenceman Tristen Doyle from the Lethbridge Hurricanes.
Paired with the return of last year’s core, including Parr, Calvert, Laing, David Lewandowski, Cooper Williams, Hayden Harsanyi and Evan Gardner in net, DaSilva is expecting the Blades to contend for an East Division title once again in 2025-26.
“I would expect us to take a step in terms of that,” DaSilva said. “At the end of the year, fighting for a division banner, I would expect that. I would expect us to be in the mix for those things; anything less would be disappointing for me.”
The Blades will be without Laing, Lewandowski and Gardner to begin the season as they’re off at NHL camps with the Flames, Edmonton Oilers and Columbus Blue Jackets.
Even though that will mean Saskatoon will be entering the season with a bare-bones lineup with few, if any, scratches, the standard set at the end of last season is going to carry into 2025-26, according to Calvert.
“We’re going to win as much as we can, as often as we can,” Calvert said. “We’re going to just be the best team that we can be.”
The Blades and Raiders will kick off the 2025-26 season at 7 p.m. on Friday at the Art Hauser Centre in Prince Albert, before the weekend series heads to SaskTel Centre at 7 p.m. on Saturday for Saskatoon’s home opener.
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