NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
A crowd of players crowd Medicine Hat Tigers goaltender Harrison Meneghin while he corrals the puck in the first period of an 8-1 loss to the Prince George Cougars on Wednesday at Co-op Place.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Medicine Hat Tigers forward Hunter St. Martin was succinct recounting Wednesday’s loss at Co-op Place.
“Pretty embarrassing, quite frankly, but I mean, you have to learn from it,” St. Martin said a day after falling 8-1 to the Prince George Cougars.
“You have to take it as a lesson and take things we didn’t do well and learn from that and come back better, because we know we have a lot more. It’s just a learning experience, you can’t dwell on it too much. We have a game tomorrow, we just have to show up then and get on the right foot again.”
The Tigers skated with the top team in the B.C. division before plaguing themselves with trips to the box, taking 43 penalty minutes to the Cougars’ 17. Captain Oasiz Wiesblatt led the team with 19 PIMs, taking a 10-minute misconduct due to an instigator penalty after a first-period fight. He was joined in the box by 20-year-old forward Mat Ward to start the second, with the latter totalling 12 PIMs on the night.
Head coach Willie Desjardins has called for better discipline from his team already this season. He says it’s a simple decision for players.
“You decide if you want to win more than you want to take penalties,” Desjardins said. “If you think those penalties hurt us, you have to quit taking them, and if you don’t, then you’ll keep doing it.
“It has to be a decision inside of how much you want to win and that’s got to be the one that motivates you. You have to learn to control it.”
Beyond the penalty troubles, the Tigers iced a young lineup with eight rookies, four called up from the South Alberta Hockey Academy in forwards Avery Watson, Brayden Ryan-MacKay and defencemen Koray Bozkaya and Riley Steen. With D-men Niilopekka Muhonen, Matt Paranych and Josh Van Mulligen all out week to week, and forward Hayden Harsanyi out month to month, there’s long-term opportunities for the younger Tigers to crack the lineup.
Rookie Shaeffer Gordon-Carroll scored the lone goal in the loss.
It’s a group Desjardins liked Wednesday night facing a team loaded with NHL talent. He also says he didn’t get enough from his older players and needs more from them heading into Moose Jaw tonight to face the Warriors.
“I don’t think we realize how important those three games were that we won in the home stand, because now we’re going on the road and we could have been sitting in a really bad spot with all our injuries,” Desjardins said. “The team will play well, we’ll get our group together, we’ll play well. But right now, you have to have each other and we didn’t have each other tonight.
“That’s something we did the last three games, we used each other and that’s why we were successful, that helped us. This one hurt but we have to get over it and get back together.”
The Tigers will have defenceman Bryce Pickford back in the lineup as he completed his three-game suspension for a kneeing major on Oct. 9. They’re hoping for a return of forward Ryder Ritchie, who is still day to day after taking a skate to the face on the same night.
Medicine Hat faced Moose Jaw on Oct. 5, falling 6-3 at home in Harrison Meneghin’s first game in the orange and black. Heading to the Moose Jaw Events Centre, where the franchise won their first WHL championship back in May, St. Martin says they’re heading into a fight.
“They know how to win hockey games, but we also know that if we come play as a team, play as a group, we can win games,” St. Martin said. “We know that and that’s we have to do. We have to bring our habits, we have to outwork them and we can’t get outworked, it’s as simple as that. So just we have to bring it, go in there, play Tigers hockey and we know we’ll get the two points.”
Before play Wednesday, the Tigers traded 19-year-old goaltender Zach Zahara to the Wenatchee Wild for a fourth-round pick in 2027 and an eighth rounder in 2025. Desjardins says having four goalies forced a deal and he wishes Zahara the best.
“Zach has been great for us, he’s an outstanding person in the room and he works hard,” Desjardins said. “It’s a tough one, bringing in Meneghin was a big move for our team, but out of that, there’s three moves now that have had to occur because of that. We know he can be a top three in the league and he’s played outstanding for us. So it’s something we just have to keep working through.”
