Rilen Kovacevic celebrates his final goal as a Raider, a wicked slapshot on the powerplay in game seven against the Edmonton Oil Kings. (Mark Peterson/Prince Albert Raiders)

By Nick Nielsen

Part 1 of 4

Raiders 2024-25 year in review: Kovacevic glad to finish WHL career as a Raider

Apr 21, 2025 | 5:00 PM

The 2024-25 season has officially come to an end for the Prince Albert Raiders. Most of the players have gone home, and the once rocking Art Hauser Centre is now quiet and waiting for the next season. Over the course of the next week, paNOW will be looking at the 2024-25 season in review with each of the graduating 20-year-olds Rilen Kovacevic, Niall Crocker, and Max Hildebrand, as well as final thoughts from Interim Head Coach Ryan McDonald and General Manager Curtis Hunt.

For Rilen Kovacevic, the season started with raising a championship banner with the Moose Jaw Warriors, but as the season went on he knew that he would likely be getting traded somewhere. He’d been dealt at the deadline three years in a row with stops in Kelowna and Edmonton before he landed in Moose Jaw last year, and with the Warriors needing to acquire pieces for their rebuild, he was already prepared to go somewhere else at the deadline.

What he wasn’t prepared for was the spot he would eventually end up in here in Prince Albert.

“I’m kind of used to it, it’s been three years of being gone at the deadline. It’s funny how it works, these guys that I played with, they surprised me. Looking at this team at the start of the year, I never thought I would be a Raider by deadline, and they dug themselves out of a pretty big hole and surprised a lot of people, and I’m happy to be a part of it.”

Kovacevic would make a splash when he joined the Raiders with eight points in his first six games as a Raider, helping the club break a three game losing skid and turning it into four straight wins. After an injury took him out of the lineup for the last five and a half games of the regular season, Kovacevic was huge in the playoffs for the Raiders where he posted 10 points in 11 games.

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For Kovacevic, his favourite memory of his time in Prince Albert is that comeback series against his former team, the Edmonton Oil Kings, highlighted by a four point night in game six. It marks the first time the Raiders have come back from a 3-1 series deficit for the first time since the 1996 playoffs against Regina in the second round, and drawing from his playoff run the year before, Kovacevic knew the Raiders would come back.

“That’s a pretty awesome feeling, and I knew the whole way. I don’t know if everyone else knew, but I knew the whole way we were going to get it done and just the way that it played out with the the game seven, it was pretty awesome.”

Kovacevic doesn’t know where his hockey journey will take him next, and while he would much rather still be playing hockey, he is looking forward to some rest time this summer. With the Memorial Cup run with Moose Jaw last year, Kovacevic was still playing competitive hockey until the beginning of June.

“The rest will be nice, but I wouldn’t rather be doing anything else. Hockey, it’s my life and I love it. I don’t know what I’d do without it. I hope I can play forever. You know, it sucks that we lost, but these guys, they’re like brothers to me now.”

Kovacevic’s championship experience and hard-nosed style of play lent itself well to the Raiders, and even though his time here was short he hopes that he can help pass on to his younger teammates who will carry the torch from here. That said, he has full confidence that the group coming up behind him in Prince Albert already has the talent to do something special.

“I told them during our last get together that they have a really special opportunity being so young that they can build really good relationships with each other and have a pretty awesome hockey team. As we saw they can, they can have the next five years of winning culture and make some good memories and friends too.”

Kovacevic was originally acquired by the Raiders in a trade with Moose Jaw in exchange for fellow 20-year-old Kryzstof Macias, 17-year-old Luke Moroz, and a 4th round pick in 2027.

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