news file photo - Wayne McBean (7) skates up-ice in this undated file photo.
srooney@medicinehatnews.com@MHNRooney
As the Medicine Hat Tigers enter their 50th anniversary season, the Medicine Hat News talked to five players – one from each decade of the team’s existence. There are differences in their stories to be sure, but read between the lines and we hope you’ll see some similarities, too.
There have been great players before and since. Great teams even.
But when anyone in the hockey world talks about the Medicine Hat Tigers, the first thing that springs to mind is the two Memorial Cup-winning squads in 1987 and ’88.
Wayne McBean would know. No matter where he went after his time in the Gas City – right up until today when he’s at one of the two golf courses he runs – people want to talk about the dynasty.
“It’s interesting, anywhere I’ve gone – I’ve played in L.A., New York, Winnipeg, I live in Phoenix for six months, I live in Calgary for six months… Anywhere I go, people talk hockey,” he said this week from one of those courses, Lakeside Greens in Chestermere.
“Hockey players, every team that I’ve ever played on has asked me about the Medicine Hat Tigers and those two Memorial Cup teams. Whether I was sitting in the dressing room in New York getting ready to play the Rangers, you might end up talking about those championship teams. It was something special that we did, people want to know how we did it, the pieces that did it.”
To McBean, who’s fittingly 50 years old as the Tigers begin their 50th anniversary season – it all began with general manager Russ Farwell. Farwell, now vice president of the Seattle Thunderbirds, assembled the championship teams bit by bit, and never let anybody get ahead of themselves.
“He was the one who hired all the scouts, he’s the one who brought in those coaches, he was the one down in the dressing room having meetings with you,” said McBean. “Normally the GM isn’t down in your dressing room talking to you all the time. Russ actually went on the ice quite a few times, ran the power play practices.
“He was hands-on, he was on the ice, he was in the dressing room, he was talking with the coaches and players. That was Russ’ team from the 20th player on the team all the way to the trainer.”
They got to the WHL finals in McBean’s first year, losing to Kamloops. In 1987 they needed a seventh game to beat Portland for the league crown, then upset the host Oshawa Generals for the franchise’s first Memorial Cup title.
It was bedlam once they got back home.
“The whole city was behind us,” he said. “The majority of the team was still in high school, we were part of the community, Hat High and McCoy and Crescent Heights (high schools), they were all very involved in support of the Tigers. We got to chat to the other students about the different games.
“It was a real community effort. You can’t win without your fans, and I think Medicine Hat, the reason they’ve had a team for 50 years is they probably have the best fans in the WHL. It’s not a big city, it’s not a super-rich city like Calgary or Vancouver, but it’s a passionate city.
“They love their Medicine Hat Tigers. As a player, you love the city right back.”
It was a balanced effort, too. Most fans think of Trevor Linden being on both teams, but McBean notes the young prodigy was only 16 years old in 1987. Linden’s 36 points were tops among the hometown players on the squad – he’d rack up 110 as a 17-year-old when they repeated as champs – but Mark Pederson led the team with 102, then 111 in ’87-88. McBean was second among defencemen with 53. Goalie Mark Fitzpatrick was fantastic.
“Probably the strength of our team was we didn’t have one player who carried the team,” said McBean. “We weren’t a Moose Jaw with a Theoren Fleury. We were the Medicine Hat Tigers that had four first-rounders and two second-rounders. There were guys who pulled on that rope a little harder at different times.
“We went out there with three solid lines and a fourth line that was a good checking line. We went out with five or six defencemen, we didn’t play three defencemen.”
McBean was one of the best at his position, however, and was drafted fourth overall by the Los Angeles Kings a month after hoisting the Memorial Cup. He actually played the first half of the 1987-88 season in L.A., returned to the Tigers where the team went on a month-long winning streak entering the playoffs. They capped the second Cup win in Quebec, beating Windsor 7-6 in the final.
Though Tigers players were certainly high-profile in the city, Farwell made sure nobody’s head got too big, either.
“The reason why that never happened with us is 100 per cent Russ Farwell,” said McBean. “He orchestrated that team, had weekly, monthly meetings with us. We had first-rounders on that team, Mark Pederson and myself, Neil Brady, then we had Trevor Linden who was projected to go first or second overall.
“There was a lot of hype around our team, a lot of guys who would let that go to their heads, but Russ was a man of integrity, he kept us all in line. He reminded us that nothing would be there if we didn’t keep up our work ethic, didn’t keep on winning. That was Russ Farwell to a tee.”
The lessons McBean learned from being on those teams suited him well. He played 211 NHL games, another 117 in the AHL but retired in 1994 after a wrist injury.
Not bad for a kid from Calgary who barely had his driver’s licence before coming to the city.
“It was a special time, a special group of guys,” he said. “I was very very proud, and still proud to be part of that.
“Anybody that knows junior hockey or hockey in general, you talk about championship teams. That’s just a natural thing to do. It’s easy to talk about because it was such a fun time, an exciting time for the players, the city and all the families involved.”
