PHOTO COURTESY ED FONGER SWIFT CURRENT BRONCOS
Medicine Hat Tigers goaltender Evan May reaches to his right to corral a puck during the Tigers' 8-7 overtime win Friday night at Swift Current over the Broncos.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
The Medicine Hat Tigers have lots to build off after a split weekend.
The Tigers picked up two of a possible four points over the weekend, with an 8-7 overtime win Friday at Swift Current over the Broncos before falling 4-3 Saturday at Co-op Place against the Moose Jaw Warriors. Add a couple more days, and a 4-2 loss against the Regina Pats last Wednesday has them 1-3 in their last three.
It’s a stretch head coach Willie Desjardins says illustrates how tight the league is.
“Every team is good, we’re a good team as well but it’s going to be tough, every game is going to be hard and super close,” Desjardins said. “We have a lot of work ahead of us, we have to get better. But I was happy with our group, I thought they played hard. You know, I like our group but we have to continue to improve.”
The loss to Moose Jaw gave Medicine Hat some lessons on their special teams, with the Warriors scoring twice on the power play and also capitalizing with a pair of shorthanded goals. Desjardins says teams learn more from losses, and they have to learn ways they can improve.
“Moose Jaw did a good job getting us to change the way we’re playing,” Desjardins said. “They got on our power play and all of a sudden, now we’re worried about them scoring and we’re not doing the things we need. We have to be able to be good enough that we don’t need to change, other teams have to change because of the pressure we’re putting on them.
“We have stuff to improve on for sure and we can get better. We’re committed to it, so it’ll be interesting as we go forward to see where we end up.”
When it comes to what the Tigers need to improve on from the weekend and going forward, it comes down to habits, Desjardins says.
“It’s your forecheck recovery, your tracking, it’s your work ethic, it’s coming back to dice in front of the net, all those things are just structural things,” Desjardins said. “It’s being ready at the start of every period, being disciplined, staying out of the box, that was a difference in Swift Current, we had more power plays and that was a big difference in the game. Moose Jaw was opposite and it takes you out of it and you just can’t. We have to stay out of the box.
“Those are things you’re going to learn and then it’s how quick we can change when we learn. We have to learn and then we have to change.”
It was the Tigers’ top power play unit that was burned for two shorthanded goals by Moose Jaw’s Brayden Yager. Rookie forward Gavin McKenna is on that unit and says the way Moose Jaw beat them is a lesson they have to take and build from.
“I think we outplayed them, I think we’ve outplayed pretty much every team we played, but it comes to special teams in that game, we had the two goals against on the power play again, which if we didn’t let that in, we probably would have won that game,” McKenna said. “It’s definitely good for us because we’ve learned off that and it just shows we were right there with one of the top teams in the league, so it should bring us confidence.”
Associate coach Joe Frazer works with the power play and says there are two parts of their approach with the man advantage they’ll look to improve on – offensive zone puck retrieval and breaking the puck out of their own end.
“When on the puck retrieval, making sure we’re sprinting to our spots so they can’t get the puck out,” Frazer said. “We keep it in so we can stay in the O-zone, that’s No. 1, just making sure we’re working harder without the puck in the O-zone. Then the second part is making sure we’re coming back and executing the breakouts together. Both of those, if we can clean those up, that will take away most chances against.
“When you look at our penalty kill, we have so much speed on it we create a lot of chances on our penalty kill, too. It’s the way teams are killing nowadays, a lot of high-end guys are penalty killers and with a lot of speed. So when you do make a mistake on the power play, it can cost you. So it’s just making sure we’re getting our details dialled in without the puck.”
