The first goal of the season for the St. Albert Tire Warehouse Raiders is the Mac’s tournament. A winning record and a top placing in the north standings before the qualification cutoff date would secure the first Mac’s invite for the Raiders since the 2012/13 team finished 3-2 as quarter-finalists. Last year’s sluggish 3-6-1 start left the Raiders on the sidelines for the Mac’s a Christmas holiday tradition in Calgary. “We want to do our best to make the Mac’s tournament, so obviously we want to win every game we can,” said left-winger Eddie Gallagher. The Raiders are trending in the right direction with two wins during the season-opening weekend in the Alberta Midget AAA Hockey League. “It boosts a lot of our confidence,” said left-winger Xavier Halterman. “We’re obviously aiming for the Mac’s tournament so it helps to start off on that foot so now we have confidence knowing that we can win games. It will help us build for this weekend and all weekends to come.” The Raiders are in Calgary to play the Northstars (1-0-1) tonight at 7:30 p.m. at Max Bell Centre and the Buffaloes (2-0) Sunday at 1:45 p.m. at Cardel Rec South. “We’re going to do our best to carry what happened throughout last weekend onto this weekend. We’re going to try and play our style there and use the momentum from the weekend to create that snowball effect,” Gallagher said. The Raiders posted wins of 4-2 against the Sherwood Park Kings (1-1) on the road and 5-2 against the Grande Peace Storm (0-1-1) at Akinsdale Arena. “We played really well as a team. We contributed both offensively and defensively. We did our part to win both games,” Halterman said. “We overcame adversities in both games. In Sherwood Park we were down by a goal (2-1 in the second period) and we came back and against Grande Prairie we were tied (2-2 after 40 minutes) and we were able to come back and get the lead again.” Goals 1:51 minutes apart by Brady Nicholas with the equalizer and Jacob Charko with the winner with 58 seconds left in the second turned the tide against the Kings. The Raiders also benefited from unassisted markers by Erik Boers in the first and Gallagher with 2:37 to play. In the team’s home debut, a shorthanded tally by the Storm knot it at two with 4:04 left in the middle frame and in the third Stuart Dovey and Zach Carlson connected on the power play. The first of two goals by Carlson in the period was scored at even strength 81 seconds after Dovey broke the tie. Nicholas and Charko, on the power play, lit the lamp in the first and Mason Rezewski and Ryan Harker picked up two assists apiece. Mitch Reidy started both games in net and recorded 17 saves against the Kings (1-1) and 16 stops against the Storm. “It’s always great to get off to a good start in your season,” Gallagher said. “We really played fast paced hockey and we used that to our advantage. We passed the puck well so that was pretty good. We were also mixing up our forechecks. “Our style is fast paced hockey, kind of annoying, dumping a lot of pucks and playing really hard.” Gallagher, 16, led the Raiders in scoring last weekend with four points skating on a line with Nicholas and Carlson. Last season as a first-year Raider, Gallagher produced seven goals and 15 points in 33 games. “My role on the team is to put up points and help our team succeed in that area,” said the Grade 12 St. Albert Catholic High School student. “Last year I was quiet in the room but talkative on the ice but this year I’m a lot more talkative in the room.” Gallagher joins Halterman and Nicholas up front, as well as Reidy and defencemen Rezewski and Aidan West as returnees from the 16-14-4 Raiders, second-place finishers in the north and division semifinalists. In the playoffs, the Raiders lost the deciding game in the best-of-five division semifinal to the third-place Leduc Oil Kings (14-15-5), the eventual AMHL champions. “We had a really good team and having returning players under the same coaching coaching staff this year helps out a lot because you know what the coach (Jack Redlick) expects so we can tell the newer players what we have to do as a team. Last year we were all adjusting to a new system, even the returning players from the year before, so this year we know how to play underneath the coach and we’re able to go into the systems right away and play really well,” said Halterman, the 2017 recipient of the Richard Warwick Memorial Trophy, presented annually by the AMHL to the player who demonstrates leadership on and off the ice. Halterman, 17, generated nine points in 34 games and equalled his goal total in the playoffs with three. “As a defensive player it was my job to get the puck out of our zone and get it into the offensive zone and this year it’s the same thing but if I get into the offensive zone I'm expected to produce and help out the team offensively as well as being strong defensively and not being scored on,” said the Grade 12 St. Albert High student who provided a veteran presence for linemates' Boers and Carson Henry, a pair of graduating midget 15 St. Albert Flyers, during the weekend sweep. ICE CHIPS: Austin Spiridakis, a first-year Raider who played for the bantam AAA St. Albert Gregg Distributors Sabres last season, has committed verbally to the Quinnipiac Bobcats, an NCAA division one team in the Eastern College Athletic Conference. Quinnipiac is based in Hamden, Connecticut.
