Tigers too much for Wildcats, win 3-1 Monday

RIMOUSKI, QUE.

The Medicine Hat Tigers have put themselves one win from the Memorial Cup finals.

The Tigers beat the Moncton Wildcats 3-1 Monday night, giving them two wins to tie the OHL champion London Knights with the pair of victories.

“I thought we played a good first period, it was close and I thought they came out and they got one right at the start of the third and they had some chances,” head coach Willie Desjardins said. “They had lots of chances. I thought we created lots, but I thought we gave up some stuff that we don’t need to give up. I thought our team played well and we’re happy certainly to get the win.”

Moncton head coach Gardiner MacDougall opened his postgame media with news that his son Taylor, who is the Wildcat’s general manager, had been informed of the passing of his father in law Pat Buckley.

“It is certainly a devastating loss, it’s the hardest game I ever had to coach,” MacDougall said. “He was an unbelievable sportsman, top notch golfer, a former university hockey player and he was a second father to my son, Taylor. They bonded like no other and obviously the hardest game I’ve ever had to coach and we had a really good opponent as well.”

The Tigers offered their condolences to start their pressers.

“That’s a terrible way to have to go into a game, certainly, you can’t say words for that and how hard that would be,” Desjardins said. “That just makes it really hard, it kind of takes away from the game for sure, it’s secondary.”

Ryder Ritchie scored twice, extending his Memorial Cup total to three goals and four points.

“My line mates are making it easy for me,” Ritchie said. “They’re finding me and I’ve just kind of tried to put myself in good spots for them. But obviously it’s all my line mates.”

Ritchie’s first goal of the contest came 4:24 into the opening period.

Gavin McKenna had a break into the Moncton end and was stopped by Mathis Rousseau on the rush. Oasiz Wiesblatt picked up the loose puck and spun to feed Ritchie for his second straight opening goal in the tournament.

Cayden Lindstrom made his return to the Tigers’ lineup, making his Memorial Cup debut in the win, winning six of 11 face-offs.

“It’s always  special to be here and I’m super grateful to come in and play here with my teammates,” Lindstrom said. “Overall, felt good just to be with the guys and compete.”

Ritchie’s second goal of the contest came on a power play in the middle of the second period. The Tigers already had a goal called back on the man advantage, a loose puck off a point shot from Tanner Molendyk settled into the crease and was dragged through the blue paint into the net by the skate of Liam Ruck. The goal lights were lit but it was waved off, confirmed no goal via review.

Following that, Ritchie hammered home a one timer from the circles off a pass from Andrew Basha at the bottom of the dot to the left of Rousseau. Ritchie’s second of the night and third of the tournament put the Tigers ahead 2-0 just 18 seconds before the halfway point of the second. Jonas Woo had the second assist.

The Wildcats snapped Meneghin’s shutout bid, scoring 31 seconds into the third period. Dyllan Gill, a fellow Tampa Bay Lightning prospect, unleashed a shot that bounced off a Tiger and past the net minder to cut Medicine Hat’s lead to 2-1. Loke Johansson and Alex Mercier had the assists. Meneghin made 21 saves for his second win of the Memorial Cup.

The Tigers outshot Moncton 41-22, going 2-5 on the power play while holding Moncton 0-2 on their man advantage. They iced the win with an empty netter off the stick of McKenna with 7.3 seconds left in the game. Ritchie had the lone assist for the three-point night.

The Tigers are back in action Tuesday taking on the London Knights, with the winner of that round-robin game getting a bye to the Memorial Cup finals. The loser will face the winner between Moncton and the Rimouski Oceanic on Wednesday, meeting them in the semifinals.

The Tigers faced all but the minimum in the WHL Playoffs, with a 16-2 record en route to the sixth Ed Chynoweth Cup in franchise history. Desjardins says they’ll look to avoid the semis, a plan not to dissimilar from the Knights.

“Every game here is so hard, you don’t want to play any more games, London’s in the same spot though, they want to do the same thing,” Desjardins said. “So just because they want it doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. It’s going to be a real hard battle. We played tonight, so it’ll be another little bit of a challenge. It’s important to win that game, but we’ll have to see what happens.”