NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Tigers forward Ryder Ritchie signals to the Swift Current Crowd after scoring in the first period of a 4-3, overtime Game 4 win over the Broncos on April 2.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Ryder Ritchie was ready to meet his former club in the first round of the WHL Playoffs. Instead, he’ll face off against the Raiders with a spot in the East finals on the line.
The Medicine Hat Tigers and Ritchie get set to face the Prince Albert Raiders in the second round of the WHL Playoffs, his first playoff matchup against the club that drafted him 14th overall in 2021.
He’s excited for the series, which gets underway Saturday and Sunday at Co-op Place, but adds he’s just looking at it as any other series.
“I can’t really get caught up in playing against my former team, I just have to do what I can and just do what I can to help the team win,” Ritchie said.
Ritchie played 108 games across two seasons with Prince Albert before he was acquired by the Tigers in August in a deal that sent forward Tomas Mrsic, a 2025 third-round pick and a conditional 2028 third-round pick the other way. He also made his playoff debut with the Raiders last season, in a first-round series with the Saskatoon Blades where he scored three goals and seven points in five games.
In his first season donning the orange and black, Ritchie had 29 goals and 61 points while being limited to 53 games after missing a month with an upper-body injury suffered from taking a skate to the face.
Tigers head coach Willie Desjardins says it will be a tough series for the Minnesota Wild prospect.
“They’ll be keying on him but good players look forward to that as well,” Desjardins said. “That’s your time, the more adversity you get, the better it is. So he’ll be excited, they’ll key on him, no different than us with Mrsic, he’s a good player for the Raiders. He’s had a big year and we know that we have to be careful with him.”
Ritchie has been part of one of the top lines in the WHL Playoffs alongside Gavin Mckenna and Oasiz Wiesblatt. In five games, the former Raider has four goals and eight points during the Tigers first-round gentlemen’s sweep of the Swift Current Broncos.
That series offered a similar experience for forward Mat Ward who was facing his former club in the postseason for the first time since being traded to Medicine Hat in May 2024.
He says there was awkward moments in the series and his advice for Ritchie is to stay focused.
“They’re going to try and frustrate him, for sure but we know that,” Ward said. “He can’t get frustrated or take penalties and stay disciplined. We’re gonna get our looks and we have to capitalize on it.”
Ritchie made his first return to Prince Albert and the Art Hauser Centre on Nov. 20, a 3-2 overtime win for the Tigers who took the season series 3-0-1. In that season series, the 18-year-old Ritchie had two goals and four points.
While the series starts in Co-op Place, Games 3 and 4 will be in Prince Albert on the 23rd and 24th. Ritchie says he’s looking forward to feeling the Art Hauser atmosphere but he says both cities have passionate fans who make each game exciting.
“The Hauser is probably one of the loudest rinks in the CHL and they have a lot of die-hard fans there, but so do we,” Ritchie said. “This rink has been unbelievable since Game 1, so we just have to take the energy from our crowd. But when we’re there, we can’t let them build off their crowds energy, because that’s a big factor.
“When I played there, they have that loud horn they play all the time and the fans are real loud, so they try to build off energy. So we just have to be relentless and we can’t get kind of emotionally rattled.”
