Last chance: Søgaard, Danes need win to stay alive at world juniors

By Ryan McCracken on January 4, 2019.

rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com @MHNMcCracken

Four seems to be the number for Medicine Hat Tigers to start 2019.

The Tigers are riding a four-game winning streak, with four goals in each of those victories to sit four points back of the Edmonton Oil Kings for the top of the Central Division. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Tabby goaltender Mads Søgaard has been dealt four consecutive four-goal losses with Denmark at the IIHF World Junior Championship.

Facing elimination and relegation, Søgaard will have one more chance to snap that trend when the drop the puck Game 2 of his country’s best-of-three relegation series against Kazakhstan today, the fourth day of the new year, at 10 a.m.

“I think we’re confident that we have the ability to turn this thing around,” said Søgaard, who will be eligible to play in next year’s tournament as well. “Our focus is just to win the next one, then we’ll take it from there.”

A victory this afternoon would push Søgaard and Denmark into a decisive Game 3 Saturday at 10 a.m. The winner of the best-of-three set will remain in the tournament next Boxing Day, while the loser will be relegated to the Division 1-A tournament.

While Wednesday’s relegation round opener had the Danes staring down a similar result in a 4-3 loss, Søgaard says the overall effort left his team feeling confident, especially after netting their first three goals of the tournament and nearly forcing overtime in the dying minutes of regulation.

“Getting on the board was huge. It was definitely nice to see it from the other end, to finally see it go in and see the smiles on all my teammates’ faces. It was worth the wait, I’ll say,” he said. “It was great, but we still have a lot of work to do in two really tough games coming up.”

Søgaard added his team plans to take a similar offensive approach but hope to tighten things up on the back end to limit Kazakhstan’s quality scoring chances. While Denmark limited their opponent to just 19 shots in Wednesday’s loss, many came from prime scoring areas, including breakaway goal that held up as the game-winner.

“I think we definitely need to play harder defensively. They didn’t have a lot of chances, but the ones they do get are getting pretty dangerous. I think if we tighten up a little bit defensively so they don’t get those Grade-A scoring chances I think we can do really well and keep them from scoring against us,” said Søgaard. “That’s our goal going into the next game. I think we’re real confident in ourselves that we can score some goals. I think we had 43 shots on goal, so we have tons of offence.”

Winning means more than just another chance to stay alive at the tournament. It’s a chance for Søgaard and his Danish teammates — a group that has largely grown up on the ice together — to soak in the limelight for another few days before taking off around the globe to continue their individual careers.

“The thing about Danish guys is we’ve all pretty much played together. It’s not new for us to be here, everyone knows each other,” said Søgaard. “I think we just have a good group because we all know each other and we’ve played against each other and stuff like that. Being here, and everybody just having a good time, I’ve enjoyed living in the moment. When it comes to hockey, we’ve just got to give it 110 per cent every time. I think we’ve done that so far. We’ve been unlucky with some shots on the post and crossbar and on the line and everything like that, but it was good to see it go in (Wednesday) and I think we’re just going to build on it.”

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