NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Tigers forward Oasiz Wiesblatt celebrates scoring the Teddy Bear Toss in Saturday's 2-1 loss to the Saskatoon Blades at Co-op Place on Saturday.
With a little over five minutes left Saturday night Teddy Bears hit the sky at Co-op Place.
Oasiz Wiesblatt scored the special goal to release the bears but it was the Saskatoon Blades ultimately coming out with the 2-1 win. The Tigers entered the contest off a 4-3 win Friday night in Calgary against the Hitmen.
“We needed that to happen and it was good,” Wiesblatt said about scoring the Teddy Bear toss goal. “The crowd brought a lot of teddy bears which was good to see.
“We played pretty good and their goalie played really good,” Wiesblatt said. “I thought we had a lot of chances, we hit like five posts. Overall we played a pretty good 60 minutes but just couldn’t get through Austin Elliott.”
Elliott turned aside 34 of the Tigers 35 shots Saturday night. Across the ice from him, Beckett Langkow stopped 22 shots in what was a goaltenders duel. Langkow says he likes going head-to-head, save-for-save with another goalie whenever he can.
“It’s fun, it sucks that I let in one more than him tonight but those games are always good,” Langkow said.
The Blades opened the scoring early in the contest, Vaughn Watterodt squeezed a shot through Langkow 1:57 into the game to them a 1-0 lead.
Medicine Hat hit multiple posts in the first and second period as the two teams traded chances but the game remain knotted up at 1-0 in part to Langkow and Elliott’s performances.
The Blades capitalized on their third power play of the night, jumping ahead 2-0 5:36 into the third period on a power play goal from Jayden Wiens. A little over 10 minutes later the Tigers finally found the back of the net on Wiesblatt’s 11th goal of the season. Andrew Basha and Josh Van Mulligen had the assists on the Teddy Bear goal. Head coach Willie Desjardins said they were happy to get that goal.
“You’re always worried going into the teddy bear to toss, ‘it’s your biggest concern,” Desjardins said. “We had some really good looks early and they didn’t go, we hit a couple of posts and had a power play there we didn’t score on but it was good. We came back and got that one. But the boys deserved better tonight, they played hard.”
The 2-1 loss drops the Tigers record to 9-13-4-1 while Blades are 19-5 on the season. The Tigers head into a busy week with four games in five nights, three of them on the road. Their next game is Tuesday when they head to Edmonton to face the Oil Kings. Desjardins says the takeaway from the weekend into the week is keep working hard and had multiple players who stood out Saturday.
“Langkow was good in net tonight, for sure,” Desjardins said. “(Reid) Andressen was really good last night. Throughout the weekend, Mackenzie’s line was good, I think McKenzie was 12-1 on chances tonight, he was huge and so was ‘O’ (Wiesblatt). Those two lines were good tonight. We just have to keep battling.”
Tigers defenceman Bogdans Hodass was scratched Saturday night with Kurtis Smythe taking his place alongside Rhett Parsons. Desjardins said the Latvian was “banged up” and hoped he would be back for Tuesday’s game.
