Tigers open training camp Friday ahead of 2023-24 season

By JAMES TUBB on August 30, 2023.

jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb

The Medicine Hat Tigers’ 2023-24 season is just around the corner, with preparations getting underway Friday.

The Tigers open training camp this week ahead of their 54th season in the Western Hockey League. Returning players, rookies and prospects will check in Thursday and hit the ice Friday for the first of three days of action.

Head coach and general manager Willie Desjardins says he’s excited at the start of each camp as they find out how players got better in the offseason.

“You don’t know what’s going to come into camp, you don’t know how guys are going to train over the summer, so you don’t know what to expect,” Desjardins said. “You don’t know what to expect from the other teams around the league, so it’s a new one. But we’re excited by our group, they’re going to play hard and I’m excited to see what they’re going to do.”

The Tigers enter training camp off a 30-win season, making the playoffs as the eighth seed with a 30-29-8-1 record before falling in four games in the first round against the relocated, first-place Winnipeg Ice. Desjardins says the message remains the same within the room, they want to be a competitive team and will need to wait until the regular season to determine where they’ll be.

“I can’t say exactly where we’re going to be at until I see the guys, until I see the other teams around the league,” Desjardins said. “There’s some good teams around the league, probably a little older than us. But for us, we’re determined to be better than we were last year. But it’s going to be hard, there’s just lots of good teams.

“Just because we want to be better, it’s not going to happen unless we are totally committed.”

The Tigers had not released a training camp roster by press time, but say in a release that all eligible returnees from the 2022-2023 season will be in attendance at camp, joined by four 2007 born players (Gavin McKenna, Matthew Paranych, Harden Harsanyi and Kadon McCann) and four members of the 2023 WHL draft class (Markus Ruck, Liam Ruck, Koray Bozkaya and Riley Steen).

Besides making two selections in the CHL import draft, the Tigers made no moves in the WHL’s off season. Desjardins says there will be moves coming as they have to trim down their roster but says they are happy with their group and how they’ve developed it.

“There’s guys out there we looked at and we talked about but the way you’re going to be successful, you’re going to have to draft right and have to develop right, so those two things are the key for any team,” Desjardins said. “You can get to the league finals and have to make a ton of trades but then you weaken yourself down the road. For us, we’re trying to develop different age groups and have everybody ready so we can take a bit of a run at it, we hope, for a few years. We hope to do that through our draft and our development.”

The players at Tigers camp are divided into team black and team orange for practices and workouts, and will play a scrimmage on both Friday and Saturday evening. The scrimmages get underway both nights at 7 p.m. Sunday is the final day of camp and has an intra-squad game from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Melin commits to University of Calgary

The Tigers announced Monday that former forward Dallon Melin has committed to play for the University of Calgary Dinos for the upcoming USports season.

The Czar, Alta. product played 67 games as a Tiger last season, adding to his 254 career Western Hockey League contests. In his five-year WHL careers, the 21-year-old had 38 goals and 91 points. While with the orange and black, Melin scored a career single-season high of 16 goals and 41 points.

Dallon spent time with the Red Deer Rebels in 187 games before coming to the Tigers as a walk-on during the 2022-2023 pre-season. He joins former Tigers teammate Brendan Lee, who also committed to the Dinos.

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