JAMES TUBB MEDICINE HAT NEWS
Medicine Hat Tigers goaltender Beckett Langkow keeps his eye on the puck in the first period of an 5-4 overtime loss against the Red Deer Rebels on Feb. 18 at Co-op Place.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
The Medicine Hat Tigers continue to keep pace in the WHL’s Eastern Conference playoff push.
The Tigers picked up a point on Saturday in a 4-3 overtime loss at Co-op Place against the Red Deer Rebels before hitting the road Monday and beating the Rebels 4-1 in matinee action.
The three points from the weekend gives them a record of 23-22-8-1 and puts the Tigers in a three-way tie for sixth in the conference with the Regina Pats and Calgary Hitmen. The Pats hold a game in hand on the Tigers with only 53 played and Medicine Hat has one on Calgary who have played 55 games.
Associate coach Joe Frazer spoke with the News from Red Deer and described the win as one of their best team games of the season.
“There were no guys trying to do it themselves, I thought it was a real team mindset and a team game,” Frazer said. “We’re fighting for a playoff spot and we have to play that way, it takes all of us to win. Coming down the stretch here we’re playing some really good teams. We have to make sure that it’s that team-first mindset and we did a really good job of that tonight.”
The Tigers got on the board early in Red Deer when Brendan Lee scored 45 seconds into the game. Andrew Basha added a power play marker in the first period and Cayden Lindstrom added another on the man advantage in the second period. After Red Deer scored early in the third Medicine Hat held their lead and Lee capped off the win with an empty netter for his 24th goal on the season.
The Tigers went 2-for-6 on the power play Monday and killed off both of their penalties, a big difference from Saturday’s loss where Red Deer scored all four regulation goals on the man advantage. Medicine Hat was also able to capitalize on the power play in the loss, going 2-for-3.
Frazer says the team liked their five-on-five play in both games and says the discipline and capitalizing on the power plays was a big point of emphasis entering Monday.
The Tigers were shorthanded in the matinee as captain Owen MacNeil did not make the trip due to illness and was declared day-to-day. Early in the first period the forward core took another loss as Pasha Bocharov was hit up high by Rebels defenceman Christoffer Sedoff. The Red Deer defender was given a five-minute major and a game misconduct penalty.
Bocharov did not return to the game and Frazer said the Escondido, Calif. product would be out of the lineup for a bit.
He’ll likely join forward Brayden Boehm on the injured list, missing both Saturday and Sunday’s game with an upper body injury sustained in practice that will keep him out of the lineup 4-6 weeks.
After Saturday’s loss Frazer described the injury as a fluke incident in practice.
The Tigers’ next contest is Wednesday when they head to Regina to battle Connor Bedard and the Pats.
“It’s going to be a big one,” Frazer said. “It’s great to get three out of four points this weekend against a really good Red Deer team, a ton of confidence.
“Now going into another tough building, they beat Lethbridge tonight so they’re playing well and obviously we got to face Connor Bedard and company and it’s going to be a good test for us.”
