NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Tigers' forward Andrew Basha celebrates his first period goal in the Tigers' 4-1 win Saturday night at Co-op Place over the Everett Silvertips.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
To any other team in the Western Hockey League, 11 wins is a total they hope to triple or quadruple by season’s end. In Medicine Hat, for the Tigers, it’s a stark reminder of dark times and a motivator for success.
The Tigers picked up their 11th win of the season Sunday in their 5-1 victory at Edmonton over the Oil Kings. It took them only 18 games to reach that mark, 13 games faster than the year prior when that 11th win came in game No. 31.
Of course the year before last, the 2021-22 Tigers were only able to muster 11 wins in their entire 68-game campaign, a franchise low.
There are only seven players remaining who played a majority of the season on that 11-win roster, with another five who came in and out of the lineup as rookies. Captain Tyler MacKenzie was one of those lucky 12 skaters and says it’s emotional thinking about how far they’ve come.
“It’s something to be pretty proud of, we never thought we’d get in this position as early as we are right now,” MacKenzie said. “To be able to get here and just have that success, it just shows hard work pays off and you can never give up, never quit. It’s that mentality for a lot of us. It’s super emotional and I’m proud of the guys that we already hit that mark we were at two years ago.”
MacKenzie says he and defenceman Dru Krebs have talked a lot about their record and how far they’ve come as a team in the past two years.
“Everyone here believed in us – the coaches, owners, fans – and for everyone to have our backs on that and to be where we are right now, it’s incredible,” MacKenzie said.
The leading scorer on the 2021-22 Tigers was forward Lukas Svejkovsky, who put up 13 goals and 30 points in 24 games before being traded to the Seattle Thunderbirds in late December. The next closest was forward Oasiz Wiesblatt, who notched 11 goals and 29 points over 64 games.
Through 18 games of this season, one past the quarter mark on the year, four Tigers have reached the 20-point plateau with Cayden Lindstrom leading the way at 14 goals and 25 points.
Sunday’s victory puts them at 11-5-2 on the season, good enough for first place in the Eastern division and conference, tied for first place in the league with the Prince George Cougars. While they are at the top, there’s only five points separating them from third place in the Central division, which is how head coach Willie Desjardins looks at his team’s standing.
“Can you say you’re the top team in the division? No, you can’t say that, it’s just way too close,” Desjardins said. “I am proud of our guys, (Brayden) Boehm has been gone and (Gavin) McKenna and our guys have battled to stay with it, which is really good. It’ll be great to get McKenna back, he’s a big part of the group but other guys have filled in and that’s good to see.”
Desjardins has liked the Tigers’ play through their first 18 games but says there’s room for improvement. He’s liked how they have found ways to win, getting a point in their overtime loss against the Lethbridge Hurricanes on Friday and pulling out the road win at Edmonton to finished a three-in-three. He says finding a way to win is a special talent that can’t be seen on paper but can be certainly be found within the team so far.
Finding wins isn’t a skill that can be taught or practised like shooting a thousand pucks a day, Desjardins says it starts somewhere and it needs to be a desire from within.
“It’s confidence and belief that you can come back,” Desjardins said. “We’ve come back a few times this year so it’s a little bit of confidence in ourselves that we can do it, which is big as well. It does happen a little bit over time but it happens because you do it once and then you start believing.”
While there is a lot to be happy about, 50 games still remain on the schedule for the Tigers as they work toward the playoffs. Between now and then there has to be an adjustment with how many penalties they are taking.
The Tigers have the second most penalty minutes in the league (276) a number Desjardins says isn’t acceptable if they want to have meaningful success.
“Our good teams in the past, we were out of the box, we were the lowest five in the league in penalties,” Desjardins said. “We have to find a way to be better at that.
“It’s also going to be a little bit of different roles for guys, finding different roles and accepting different roles in the team. It changes things, just how many (penalties) we’re taking. We’re using guys and wearing guys out and we don’t need to do that. If we find a little bit of that, we’ll find some more consistency as well.”
