The Prince Albert Junior Raiders celebrate winning the Brandon AAA Challenge after coming back from a 6-1 deficit. (Submitted photo/Curtis Bradbury)

By Nick Nielsen

U11 Hockey

WATCH: Junior Raiders bring home gold in impressive fashion from Brandon

May 1, 2025 | 11:00 AM

The regular hockey season is over, but some athletes are still getting together competitively for a few tournaments in the spring. For the Prince Albert Junior Raiders U11 hockey team, their first of two spring tournaments ended with a huge celebration after a comeback overtime victory to take the gold medal.

The Silver Division Brandon, Manitoba AAA Challenge didn’t start off great for the young Raiders squad when they faced off with the Southeast Unleashed. They would lose their opening game 4-3, but Head Coach Curtis Bradbury said that would serve as the team’s motivation through the rest of the tournament.

“We kind of used it as a building block. It wasn’t our best game, we had run into some penalty trouble, but we let them know the reality that we’re probably going to have to win out. We had seven teams in our pool, so not every team played each other, but we let them know that we would probably have to win out the rest of the games to make the playoffs, and they just kind of came together after that first loss, and you know what? There was really no stopping us after that point.”

After that opening loss, the Junior Raiders went on a tear. They’d win their next game 10-6, then a huge 16-0 shutout over the U13 Female Prairie Pilots, and a 5-3 over the Manitoba Force Squad to get into the playoffs.

In the playoff semifinal, the Raiders would move on after a 7-3 win over the Southeast Jr. Bears, sending them to the final against Dakota.

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The game didn’t start well for the Raiders as they gave up four goals in the first period, and ten minutes into the second period, Dakota had a 5-0 lead. Finally, Joren Wilson would score for the Raiders to get on the board, and the two teams would trade goals before the end of the second period, making it 6-2 heading into the third period, with another Junior Raiders goal from Henry Borysuik.

That would set up an amazing third period comeback.

“There was a lot of shock there because it was a whirlwind of 10 minutes of coming back from 6-2 to tying the game. It was odd because at no time did the kids give up, and I guess that’s why you play the game is to try and figure out and become resilient, and the kids certainly were resilient and ended up pushing it to overtime. I remember thinking ‘we’ve got it this far, I would hate to lose’.”

Less than three minutes into the third, Nixon Boutin scored unassisted. Then just over eight minutes in, another goal came from Mitchell Anthony, and they’d continue to claw away to pull within one goal thanks to the second goal of the night from Borysuik with less than four minutes to play.

In the final minute, the Junior Raiders would pull their goalie, and again Borysuik came in clutch with the game-tying goal.

“We had pulled our goalie with about 40 seconds left, and he tied the game with 40 seconds left as soon as he got on the ice, and so we decided to go with him from PA, Griffin Whitfield from Birch Hills, and Joren Wilson from La Ronge, they were our three top players in that final game, and went with the, you know, trying to finish it off right away and within 50 seconds of the overtime Joren made a a nice path to Griffin and and Griffin ended up burying it for the seventh goal.”

For Bradbury, he knows that the kids from this team will remember this win for the rest of their hockey careers, but it’s about more than that. The kids not only got to learn a thing or two about resilience, but they also got to live up to the example set by their heroes in the Prince Albert Raiders.

“A lot of our kids look up to the Raiders, and I know it’s exciting for them to represent Prince Albert as a Junior Raider, so it’s important.”

The Junior Raiders have one more spring tournament in Edmonton this year.