WHL playoffs return after 39 years

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This article was published 21/04/2022 (1445 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s been 39 long years but a hometown team is finally bringing the WHL playoffs back to Winnipeg.

While the Ice is a powerhouse squad set to host the Prince Albert Raiders on Friday night in Game 1 of a best-of-seven Eastern Conference quarter-final series, the Winnipeg Warriors of 1982-83 hold a less distinguished position in hockey history.

An expansion franchise in 1980-81, the Warriors reached the post-season only once in four seasons before being sold and transferred to Moose Jaw, Sask.

Their lone Winnipeg playoff appearance was brief, resulting in a three-game sweep at the hands of the Lethbridge Hurricanes in a best-of-five opening-round series in April of 1983.

“Where we played I think was a challenge and comparing us to the to the Jets — it’s hard, right?” recalled Jeff Lawson, a then-19-year-old Brandon-born winger on the 1982-83 Warriors. “I had so much respect for (head coach) Bruce Southern. He taught me so much as a young guy and gave me an opportunity to play, and playing with Randy Gilhen and (Darren Boyko) those were good players.”

Four decades later, the Ice and Raiders meet at Wayne Fleming Arena on the University of Manitoba campus. Game time is 7 p.m.

The Warriors’ hopes for a long run in the ‘83 playoffs collapsed with 6-5 and 7-2 losses on home ice on March 25 and 26 followed by a demoralizing 5-2 loss on the road on March 28 in which Winnipeg blew an early 2-0 lead.

Boyko, a skilled centre who led Winnipeg with 130 points during the regular season, recalled the series with a hint of bitterness. Lethbridge’s bully tactics were standard for the time.

“We got paired in the playoffs against Lethbridge and they had Slash and Spear, which was Ron and Rich (Sutter), and they kicked the crap out of me…,” said Boyko, 58, currently employed in international relations with the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. “It was frustrating.”

Boyko spent two seasons with the Warriors before moving on to the University of Toronto, where he won a national university crown with head coach Mike Keenan, and then on to an 11-year career in Finland and Germany.

“You have to face the music,” said Boyko, who went undrafted and played only one game in the bigs with the Winnipeg Jets. “I wanted to play an in the NHL. I thought I was good enough to play a couple of years but the thing is I was small, I didn’t skate well and I didn’t shoot well. Other than that, I was pretty good.”

Youthful crowds were lost in the cavernous expanse of Winnipeg Arena.

“It was always kind of a little bit of a tough market …to establish a (WHL) team, just because of travel and playing (in the old barn on Maroons Road),” said Lawson, 59, the Kelowna, B.C.- based chief operating officer of Allnorth Consultants, an engineering firm working in the gas, mining and pulp and paper industries.

“I remember playing there when parents just dropped their kids off at the rink and it used to be like a giant daycare from about 8 p.m. to 10:30 every Friday night.”

The Warriors possessed some talented local players, such as defencemen David Korol and Randy Cameron and forwards Brad Blisner and Gilhen, a future NHLer, in the lineup.

“Regina and Saskatoon kind of had a few Winnipeg kids over the years but there was a huge market there that they could draw from and draft from,” said Lawson. “And it just never seemed to be able to really take off. I think it could have gone better in a different time and in a different arena. To playing out of that Winnipeg Arena, it’s pretty hard to create an atmosphere with crowds of 3,000 or 4,000 in a rink that holds 15,000.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sawa14