Home team roars to start tourney’s second day

By Ryan McCracken on November 17, 2018.

rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com @MHNMcCracken

The South East Athletic Club Tigers made up for missed opportunities in a commanding 9-0 victory over the Swift Current Broncos on Friday at Hockey Hounds Arena.

In fact, the Tabbies put together such a dominant performance that had they allowed every opposing shot into the net through 40 minutes, they would have entered the third period in a 7-7 tie.

“Sometimes those games are tough to play in,” said Tigers head coach Jason Bartram. “You want to stick to the things that are important when you’re playing —your systems and your discipline and everything else. When games get out of hand like this sometimes you start going in reverse, back to bad habits, but I thought our guys did a good job of just sticking to what we work on every day.”

The victory follows up Thursday’s 4-2 loss to the Martensville Marauders — a game in which the Tigers outshot their opponents 42-25, but were forced to leave the ice empty-handed.

“It feels pretty good after yesterday,” said Tigers defenceman Tyler Miller. “Our forwards starting hitting their defence hard and we just kept generating from the forecheck back.”

Shane Smith led the charge with two goals and three assists, while Tyler Broesky added two goals and a helper. After racking up a 3-0 lead through the first period on goals from Broesky, Jacob Smith and Kieran Christianson, the Tigers continued to pour on in the second with two tallies from Shane Smith and individual markers by Broesky and Elias Eisenbarth. Matthew MacPherson and Denyn Smith stretched the gap to nine in the third. Bartram added his Tigers took no pleasure in ramping up the score, but with goal differential playing a hefty role in determining elimination matchups, they had to keep the pedal down.

“Nobody is here to show up any team up, they’re 14-year-old kids, but at the end of the day it’s a rule. It’s one of those rules where if you can score 15, you’re going to get 15,” said Bartram. “You don’t like doing it, but it’s part of the game. You don’t encourage it, but when it gets to that point you kind of just let your players go and whatever happens, happens.”

Bartram added the Tigers cleaned things up defensively in their bounce-back victory, keeping the Broncos to the outside while cutting down on opposing odd-man rushes and quality scoring opportunities.

“We challenged our D-guys a little bit. We made some mental mistakes (Thursday) and it cost us, we gave up some odd-man rushes. But today we right back to basics, playing simple,” said Bartram. “They made it tough for Swift Current to gain the zone and our D-guys played real well today.”

Tigers goaltender Bodee Weiss locked up the shutout victory with a 14-save performance. Colby Watson and Rylan Hildebrand shared the loss for Swift Current with a total of 25 saves.

Medicine Hat fell 3-1 to Calgary’s Edge academy in the late game, finishing the round robin with a 1-2 record.

Playoffs run Saturday and Sunday with the final at 12:30 p.m. Sunday.

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