Medicine Hat Cubs forward Callen Prosofsky dishes the puck in the first period of the Cubs game three against the Coaldale Copperheads on Feb. 20. - NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
The Medicine Hat Cubs have payback on their minds.
After making quick work of the Coaldale Copperheads in the second round of the HJHL playoffs, the Cubs now face the regular-season champion Okotoks Bisons.
The Bisons bested Medicine Hat in all five matchups with the Cubs only picking up one point against Okotoks through an overtime loss.
Cubs head coach Randy Wong said the mindset heading into the series is payback.
“We didn’t have the success we wanted in the regular season (against Okotoks), but we talked to the guys about (how) it doesn’t really matter who won the games in the regular season, we start fresh again,” Wong said. “I think the guys are open to that. We look at the stats trying to do comparisons and the two teams draw even in pretty much every category that I can find. So there is no perception that they are better than us. I think we have to go in thinking that we are equal and that we have just as good as a chance of beating them as they do us.”
Game 1 of the best-of-seven series gets underway tonight in Okotoks, Game 2 goes Friday also in Okotoks. Medicine Hat’s first home game of the series gets underway Saturday at 8:15 p.m. at the Kinplex.
The two teams do stack up statistically, as Okotoks scored only 12 more goals than Medicine Hat this season while also allowing 12 fewer goals than the Cubs. Medicine Hat has the higher ranked power play at 21.62 per cent to the Bisons 20.35 and Okotoks has the ‘stronger’ penalty kill, with a 91.72 per cent kill that is only .54 better than the Cubs.
Wong said he thinks work ethic, execution, capitalizing on mistakes and not backing down will be the key between the two close teams.
“I don’t think you can play scared. We talk about playing to win, not playing to lose,” Wong said. “If you sit back and just try to protect not getting scored on it’s not really a way of winning hockey games.”
Cubs captain Levi Schlosser said it was nice to pick up confidence coming off of a sweep ahead of a series against the Bisons.
Schlosser added they’ve been looking at video and will aim to make adjustments as needed to try and win the series.
“We’ve broke down things we need to do better and we’ll go game by game and adjust where we have to, to hopefully come out with some wins,” he said.
The Cubs top line of Schlosser, Colby Friedrich and Jacob Milne have led the way offensively in both the regular season and playoffs, with seven goals and 18 points in the series against Coaldale.
Schlosser said the three often hang out away from the ice, which has helped them produce on the ice.
Wong added they the Cubs will need to be prepared to “weather the storm” starting the series on the road, and said they will embrace an underdog title.
“We can say we’re the underdog and give them the favourite label, and we’ll go in there making sure we weather the storm for the first 10 minutes,” Wong said. “Then settle into our game and play our game plan and not worry too much about them.”
Due to the later scheduled starts of the games, visit Medicinehatnews.com/sports for post-game stories throughout the entire Cubs series.
