NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Tigers head coach and general manager Willie Desjardins addresses a group of players during practice Wednesday at Co-op Place.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
A window has opened for the Medicine Hat Tigers and they are ready to capitalize on it.
The Tigers enter the 2023-24 Western Hockey League season with championship aspirations after making the playoffs last season. They also open the first full season with 2022 first overall pick Gavin McKenna and three other prospects from the 2007-born draft class, who have been added to the mix with rookie of the year nominee Cayden Lindstrom and fellow 2024 NHL draft eligible players like Andrew Basha and Tomas Mrsic.
While the window is opening for the Tigers over the next couple of seasons, head coach and general manager Willie Desjardins says their roster construction shows they want to win this season.
“Our three 20-year-old defencemen would indicate you’re trying to build this year, you’re going after it a little bit this year,” Desjardins said. “That’s the hard part because we don’t know where we’re at, we haven’t played enough teams, we don’t know where we fit in this division. But saying that, we’ve had some guys who have gone through tough years here, and for fans, we want to give them something now, too. We don’t want them just always hoping there’s something down the road, we want to give them something now.
“Hopefully with this group of D and we have a good set of young forwards and our goaltending, hopefully we can come in and prove we’re a good team in this league. How good, well we to see.”
The Tigers’ record last season was 30-29-8-1, good for eighth in the Eastern conference and enough to earn them that first-round playoff appearance against the first-place Winnipeg Ice.
Medicine Hat is coming off a 4-0 preseason, their first perfect exhibition season in more than a decade. Desjardins says he doesn’t look around the league but instead focuses on what his team has and how they can get better. Until they’ve had a chance to face the other teams around the league and see what they look like in the regular season with their full rosters, Desjardins says it’s all unknown.
“I like what I see, I think there’s potential, there’s guys who haven’t played quite the way I thought they would at camp but I think they can play that way,” Desjardins said. “We just have to wait a little bit for that to happen. We haven’t had a chance to look at our full group with (Oasiz) Wiesblatt and (Josh) Van Mulligen here, so we have to see that, too. But I do like it and that’s where my focus is.
“I don’t worry about the rest of the league because I can’t control it. But the group I have here and see, I like. Bobby Fox has done a good job drafting, too, I think we have a good future ahead of us, so we have to build on that. But I think there are exciting times ahead for us.”
The Tigers get their season underway tonight at Calgary against the Hitmen. Desjardins, not a fan of looking beyond the game in front of him, says the expectation and goal is to again make the playoffs and build off that. But he cautions that the Tigers haven’t done anything yet and are still unproven.
“Everybody around us is going to get better,” Desjardins said. “Two teams who finished below us, Swift and Brandon, those are good teams, like really good teams, and they’re going to be good next year. Then the teams over above you, they’re going to be good, too. It’s a tough League. Prince Albert has a really good team, Edmonton is really improved. So all the guys who were below are ready to make big steps. So then what about the guys above? Well, they’re there for a reason, they’re good teams.
“Nothing is going to be easy, so we’re going to have to play hard to get anything. So, hopefully we’ve started to put together a group that can do that every night.”
Beyond getting a shot at winning his third WHL championship and the chance to capture his first Memorial Cup trophy, Desjardins says he wants the Tigers to be successful to give back to Medicine Hat and the Tigers’ faithful. His admiration for the fans in orange and black was always there in his first stint with the team but has only grown over the last few years.
“I’m even more impressed with them now than when I was first here, just for sticking with us when things are bad – to me that’s what is really important,” Desjardins said. “Hopefully for us, we can bring them that excitement again and they can be excited about our group. We do work hard every night, nobody’s ever said we don’t.
“I remember whenever they used to rank the toughest buildings to play in the league, Medicine Hat was always at No. 1, always. It was one, partly because of the team, but it was also really first because of the fans. We have a great group and hopefully we can do some things in next few years to really excite everybody.”
