news photos ryan mccracken - Mark Rassell signs a T-shirt for a fan at Canalta Centre.
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.
Mark Rassell knew Medicine Hat would be different when a bus driver flagged him down after seeing him win an event in the team’s skills competition.
He was 17, having grown up in Calgary, a million-person city where all but the biggest NHL stars can hide in relative obscurity. Suddenly in a place where going through Costco is a leisurely stroll and not a hellish nightmare, he didn’t figure anyone would know a rookie just by looking at the back of his head.
Wrong.
“I’d just won the showtime shootout,” said Rassell. “I’m walking down the street, Maple Ave., and a bus happens to pull over right next to me, not near a bus stop or anything.
“‘Hey, you! Are you Mark Rassell?’
“‘Yeah, I am. What did I do, did I do something wrong?’
“‘Oh, I need your autograph. I saw you in the showtime shootout last night.’
“Especially being from Calgary, it’s a hub of Western Hockey League players and we compare experiences, and for me they’re all like ‘why do you like the Hat?’
“How could you love it as much as you do? It’s stuff like that. All the fans know who you are.”
Rassell’s a unique character, to be sure, outgoing and basking in the limelight. He was the one who (jokingly) said he’d score the first goal in a Teddy Bear Toss game, then went out and did it.
But there’s a reason his first destination after graduating from the Gas City is Fredericton, N.B., a city of 58,000 people where the university hockey team is the top draw on a Saturday night.
“That’s why I chose (University of New Brunswick)… we’re the big ticket in town. If we go out after a win, people know who we are. It’s the little things that make you love the situation you’re in.”
Winning doesn’t hurt, either. And while the Tigers of the past decade haven’t gone further than the conference finals, they’ve been remarkably consistent, sporting a plus-.500 record all but one season.
Rassell fondly remembers the pre-season speeches by head coach and general manager Shaun Clouston emphasizing what it means to pull on a jersey that had barely changed in decades.
“There’s a reason the (team owner) Masers haven’t changed the jersey, ever, because of what the jersey represents. So when you come into camp, and you’re in the dressing room, you look at all the names on the wall of fame and you see the culture that was before you. It puts the pressure on you, like ‘OK, I’m one of these names, I need to leave a mark here.'”
Mark certainly did, scoring 50 goals his last season to join Emerson Etem and Joffrey Lupul as the only Tabbies in the half-century club this century.
Even that goal has a memorable story surrounding it, as Rassell’s close friend had taken his own life just weeks earlier.
“I was stressing hard about getting to 50,” said Rassell. “I’m at 48, starting to stress. It brought me back to reality, if I don’t get 50 it’s not the end of the world.
“He would always come watch me in Calgary so I’m going to wear the same suit and tie (as the last time I saw him) as a little tribute to him.”
He did it with two games to spare.
As part of a unique group of players to play in both the Medicine Hat Arena and Canalta Centre, Rassell spans an important stretch of team history. Progress dictated the old barn be replaced, but the $75 million price tag for the new building and the decision to put it on the city’s outskirts split public opinion.
Attendance has gone down from the regular 4,006 who crammed the old arena on a nightly basis a decade ago, but fans’ appetite for quality hockey ensures players like Rassell are looked up to by youth and occasionally given the odd perk thanks to their small-city celebrity.
“Most people from Calgary, you know who the Hitmen are but you don’t really know them,” he said. “In Med Hat, everyone knows your face and when they see you, they make an effort to say hello.
“It’s just an honour to be part of the culture.”
What’s next after 50 years of Tigers hockey? Willie Desjardins was the head coach 10 years ago, but now he’s back, awkwardly replacing Clouston, who had the post the entire time he was gone. Another new crop of youngsters will don those orange-and-black jerseys, looking to get the team’s first Memorial Cup title in 30 years.
For the first time since 2009 the team has an opening-day roster without someone you could call a hometown player, after Redcliff’s Dylan MacPherson graduated. But hopes are high, as they are at the start of every season in the Gas City.
Said Rassell: “We were always competing, and that’s one thing that comes with being a Tiger, is you’re going to win.”
