NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
The Medicine Hat Tigers rookie trio of Marcus and Liam Ruck and Shaeffer Gordon-Carroll won a WHL championship in their first season and will play a big part in the Tigers' title defence this season. The three are pictured during warmups ahead of a 10-1 win at Co-op Place on March 22 over the Lethbridge Hurricanes.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Good things come to those who wait – for Medicine Hat Tigers fans, it was an 18-year gap between championships. As they look toward the next one, patience will be required as the process begins.
Entering his 15th WHL season and awaiting the arrival of his third WHL championship ring, Willie Desjardins expects it will take some time for him to know what kind of team the Tigers will be after an offseason of change.
The Tigers turnover in the offseason has been well documented through training camp and the preseason. Two entire forward lines out with a pair of overage graduations (Oasiz Wiesblatt, Mat Ward), two pro hockey jumps (Andrew Basha, Hunter St. Martin) and three NCAA departures (Gavin McKenna, Cayden Lindstrom, Ryder Ritchie). Marcus Pacheco opted to play for the University of Alberta in his overage season.
They’ve added three U.S. forwards (Noah Davidson, Gavin Kor, Kade Stengrim), traded for 19-year-old Max Sullivan and have two unsigned forwards (Dayton Reschny, Dub Eunice III) still in the mix.
He says it’s not dissimilar to how they approached last year coming off a summer that saw them bring in four players via trades.
“I don’t think we hit our stride until probably January, February, but that doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to win in the first half, it doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to be good,” Desjardins said. “But we’ll be after Christmas before we’re at the top of our game. And that’s probably with every team around the league. So it’s not just us, it’s everybody.”
That’s the closest Desjardins will get to referencing last season, he’ll never forget the championship run and the 2025 team, but he says it doesn’t offer anything for this year.
“That was last season, so probably not a lot, it doesn’t count to this season, it’s a new year,” Desjardins said. “We just have to have expectations for this year’s team.”
Since the beginning of training camp Desjardins has looked at the Tigers as a team that will be led by their defensive group with five returnees. It’s a team brand that will be new for the franchise’s winningest coach. The 2004 Tigers were led by the forwards, the 2007 group was more a mixture of talent Desjardins says, with Kris Russell and the addition of Michael Sauer bolstering the blue line.
Last year’s team had a loaded forward core anchored by a blue line that surprised and stifled opponents, led by the horse of a hired gun in Tanner Molendyk. The 2025-26 Tigers will rely on the five returning defenceman led by overager Josh Van Mulligen, 19-year-olds Bryce Pickford and Jonas Woo and Finnish blue liners Veeti Vaisanen and Niilopekka Muhonen.
Up front, the young trio of Markus and Liam Ruck and Shaeffer Gordon-Carroll will be relied upon more than they were in their rookie seasons last year. Desjardins is looking forward to seeing how they accept the challenge, he says they want it and he wants to see them run with it. He’s not unhooking the trio from the lead tied to the bench, but Desjardins says they play within the structure enough to flourish on their own.
“I don’t think you ever let the leash go., we always play with structure, we always play with discipline, but those guys are really good at that,” Desjardins said. “That’s their strength, so they’ll keep doing that and it’ll just be more asked of them.”
The upcoming season also bring the uniqueness of a WHL-hosted Memorial Cup with the Kelowna Rockets holding the rights to the 2026 tournament. In 2023, when the Kamloops Blazers hosted the Memorial Cup, the WHL’s trade deadline saw the blockbuster for the ages with Everett trading Anaheim Ducks’ prospect Olen Zellweger and forward Ryan Hofer to the Blazers for a package of 10 draft picks, including four first-round picks and four players.
The defunct Winnipeg Ice also traded 15 draft picks and multiple leading up to the deadline as they mortgaged the future for a run at playing in Kamloops that summer. Eventual WHL champion Seattle Thunderbirds also made a flurry of moves, moving 18 draft picks and multiple players.
Add in the NCAA’s rule change and the year-by-year look teams used to carry is no longer. Desjardins says it’s changed how they’ll approach seasons with recruiting in the summers more prevalent than ever.
“Before you could really predict what you were going to have the following year, this year we had different guys back, you kind of predict that,” Desjardins said. “Now you go in the summer and you don’t know what you’re going to have back, so it’s going to change but that’s just the way it is.”
