PHOTO COURTESY STEVE HISCOCK/SASKATOON BLADES
Medicine Hat Tigers goaltender Carter Casey looks at the puck on the stick of Saskatoon Blades' forward Cooper Williams during WHL action Friday in Saskatoon. The Blades beat Medicine Hat 3-2 in a shootout.
Medicine Hat News
Minutes and seconds, inches and moments, the Medicine Hat Tigers were bits away from pulling out a win Friday night.
The Tigers, in Saskatoon for the first of a two-game road trip, led the Blades 1-0 with a little over 10 minutes left in the third. They grabbed another lead and were up by one with just under a minute left in the game before Saskatoon tied it up again. The Blades applied the pressure in overtime and then blanked the Tigers in the shootout for a 3-2 win.
Former Tiger Hayden Harsanyi scored the lone shootout goal, with Noah Davidson, Andrew Basha and Liam Ruck all turned aside by Evan Gardner in the skills competition. Gardner finished with 27 saves in the Blades’ win. Across the ice from him, Carter Casey made 29 saves in his 20th appearance of the season.
Ethan Neutens scored his eighth, re-directing a shot from Yaroslav Bryzgalov 8:50 into the game. The overage forward’s goal was the only mark of the contest until the Blades’ Hunter Laing tied it up at 9:48 of the third. He banked a shot off Casey’s mask and into the net.
The Tigers re-gained a lead a little over two minutes later when Basha beat Gardner with a shot that trickled into the net. Luke Cozens and Kade Stengrim had the assists on Basha’s fifth of the season.
Saskatoon pulled Gardner for the extra attacker and made good. Cooper Williams scored with 56 seconds left in the game to tie it up at 2-2 and force overtime. The Blades out chanced the Tigers 3-1 in the extra frame but couldn’t score, sending the contest to the shootout. Davidson and Basha were turned aside and Casey stopped Laing before Harsanyi scored. The Blades’ goal put Liam Ruck in a must-score opportunity, the younger twin Tiger was stopped by the Blue Jackets’ prospect.
The Blades outshot the Tigers 32-29. Neither team scored on the power play, Medicine Hat held 0-3 and the Blades held 0-5.
The Tigers were without captain Bryce Pickford who did not make the trip to Saskatchewan according to the WILD 94.5 radio broadcast. The Montreal Canadiens blue line prospect leads the WHL in goals with 33 and all CHL defencemen in points with 62.
They are in Prince Albert on Saturday, taking on the Eastern conference-leading Raiders, a week after the 2025 East division champions snapped the Tigers 19-game win streak with a 8-5 score. Prince Albert beat the Swift Current Broncos 6-1 on Friday to lead the Tigers (32-7-3-3) in the conference by two points.
