NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Tigers head coach and general manager Willie Desjardins watches play unfold down the ice in the third period of a 4-3 win over the Swift Current Broncos on March 25 at Co-op Place.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Willie Desjardins was excited to see the 4,506 in attendance in the Medicine Hat Tigers’ playoff clinching win. Now he’s looking to give them more excitement as the WHL playoffs get underway.
The Tigers open their first-round series tonight in Winnipeg against the first-place Ice. Game 2 is Saturday in Winnipeg before the best-of-seven returns to the Hat and Co-op Place on Tuesday and Wednesday for Games 3 and 4. Desjardins says they are looking forward to taking on what will be a challenging series and fulfilling a duty to their fans.
“We have a responsibility to be a good team who’s going to play hard and give them some excitement,” Desjardins said. “We’re trying to get back in that place and for us whenever we see the fans, it’s exciting and we always want that.
“I like coaching to see teams or individuals do things that people don’t think they can do, and this is an opportunity for us to try to do that. It’s an opportunity we can go out and go after. We will be ready, we have to be ready and they’ll be a challenge, there’s nothing easy about that team. We can play great and still lose, that’s in the cards. But it’s not saying if you play great you won’t win. So we have to play great and see what happens.”
In a span of one season the Tigers had a 48-point improvement in the standings, going from the last-place team in the entire Canadian Hockey League in 2021-22 with a record of 11-53-3-1 to taking the eighth and final playoff spot in the WHL’s Eastern Conference after a 2022-23 season of 30-29-8-1. For that growth Medicine Hat gets a chance to dance with Winnipeg, who throughout the season were one of the top teams in the CHL.
Desjardins says they have to be at the very top of their game if they want success against the Ice.
“It’s not four lines, it’s also six D, it’s two goalies, you have to have everybody on top of their game, you don’t win unless you have that,” Desjardins said. “We have to have good discipline, there’s parts of our game we have to stay out of the box because they have a great power play and we just can’t put them on the power play. We have to make sure that they can’t get their transition, we have to get pucks deep. We have to try to create opportunities, we have to go to the net.
“All the things we talked about all year, we talk about it all a year, but now it’s even more important that we do it.”
Winnipeg enters the series with eight players who have been drafted into the NHL and a projected top-10 pick in this year’s entry draft in Zach Benson. The Ice have mortgaged the future for this season, having traded so many draft picks they have just four picks in the first six rounds of the next four WHL drafts, none before the third round.
For Medicine Hat, this season breaks the seal on what should be at least a three-year contention window ahead. Despite this not being their prime year for contention, Desjardins says there is no downside in this series.
“It’s just a huge opportunity,” Desjardins said. “Whenever you approach a series, you approach it to win, like, that’s just what you plan on. That’s how we’ll go into it and we’ll go in with the mindset we have to find a way to win.”
Medicine Hat is not far removed from being one of the top teams in the WHL, they sat in sixth place in the league with five games remaining in 2019-20 before the season was shutdown and the playoffs were cancelled due to COVID-19. That season was Desjardins’ first at the helm in his second stint coaching the orange and black. He says this year is the first push toward returning to that level and gives them an opportunity to see how much each player has grown toward that goal.
“I want us to be a really good franchise, I don’t want to just be average or whatever, I want to be good and this is a step in the process of becoming that,” Desjardins said. “How good will (Cayden) Lindstrom be, how good will (Tomas) Mrsic be, I don’t know where they’ll be. (Oasiz) Wiesblatt and (Andrew) Basha, you don’t know how far they’ve come.
“The good thing here is it’s all about accountability and the other team makes you accountable. You can do bad things against some teams and not have to pay a price. But if you don’t do what you’re supposed against these guys, it’s not going to be good, these guys will make you accountable. That’s how you learn, you learn through accountability. So it will be a situation where we have lots of learning to do, but lots of things can happen in a playoff series.”
The Tigers knew in early January 2022, when the last game of their 11-win season was going to be. This year, the date of their last game is in their control. Desjardins says it meant a lot to him how much everyone from Tigers ownership to the fans stuck with the team through that difficult season.
“It was a really good thing, I’ve seen the other side and to see that is really pretty special because it doesn’t always happen in life anymore, where people will go through that,” Desjardins said. “They always say the storm will pass. I don’t know if it’s completely passed or where it’s at but it certainly is brighter now.
“For us, we need to push because there’s still lots of learning to go. I’m just grateful for what everybody did this year, I really am. From the players, the fans to the management and owners, I’m grateful and I think it’s exciting. I want to pay them back. There’s lots of people we want to pay back for believing and being with us.
“And so now it’s time.”
