Hat Tigers forward Cayden Lindstrom skates toward his bench with a teddy bear in hand after scoring the Teddy Bear Toss goal Saturday night in a 6-2 win over the Prince Albert Raiders at Co-op Place.--NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Winning cures everything, and seeing thousands of teddy bears fly makes it all a little sweeter.
The Medicine Hat Tigers bumped a two-game losing streak Saturday with a 6-2 win over the Prince Albert Raiders during the Medicine Hat News Teddy Bear toss night.
Cayden Lindstrom scored 1:14 into the contest to send the bears flying from the stands packed with 3,821 Tigers’ faithful, the largest Co-op Place crowd of the season. The 17-year-old NHL draft-eligible forward scored again in the contest, but was happy to help release the bears.
“We love our fans and we love when they come to support us in a big event like this, and they all came with their teddy bears, it just means a lot to us really,” Lindstrom said.
Gavin McKenna scored twice and rookie forwards, Hayden Harsanyi and Kadon McCann each found the back of the net. Coming off two losses where Medicine Hat was outscored 12-6, assistant coach Josh Maser says it was a return of Tigers hockey.
“We played a good game, we can’t take anything away from our opponents the last two games, they played us well but we definitely came and dictated the game to them (Saturday),” Maser said. “I thought right off the first goal, (Rhett) Parsons got up in the forecheck, we reloaded above and got that goal right away. Then we continued to play shift after shift, four lines played and every line played well. We were getting into it, taking away time and space from their defence and we played Tigers hockey. We played our game and not theirs.”
The win keeps the Tigers in second place of the Eastern conference with a record of 17-8-2, a point ahead of the Moose Jaw Warriors who have played one more game, and three points behind the conference-leading Saskatoon Blades, who have played one more game as well.
Zach Zahara stopped 25 shots for his sixth win of the season. He’s recorded a win in all six of his appearances on the year, four of those coming in games he’s started. The 18-year-old was happy with his own game and the team’s game in front of him. He says they need to build off it as a group and when it comes to his string of success, it’s just another win.
“Just have to keep it going, you can’t get to high or too low,” Zahara said. “Just have to stay even and keep going.”
It took only eight minutes to get the bears all wrangled up and in bins ready to be distributed between the Medicine Hat & District Health Foundation, the Salvation Army, the Medicine Hat Women’s Shelter and the Medicine Hat News Santa Claus Fund. The Tigers will make that memorable trip on Wednesday.
While Zahara says he didn’t have any concerns staying focused with the early period pause, McKenna wasn’t fond of the mini-break but says he still enjoyed the moment.
“There’s a bit of a break there, I don’t know if I like that, I like to just stay in the game but it was good,” McKenna said. “It could be easy to get out of the game there and lose momentum but we obviously stuck with it and the game was super fun.
“Knowing that there’s a community behind our back, it’s the least we can do is just give back to the community. We always try to do our best. Whether it’s guys going out to the schools with little kids or this game, we do our best to try to give back for what they do for us.”
The Tigers head into the week with two games on the docket, a home-and-home series against the Edmonton Oil Kings that has Medicine Hat at home Friday and on the road Saturday. Maser says it will be another week of getting better ahead of the matchup.
“We can’t take them lightly by any stretch of the imagination, they’re a good team, they’ve been up on us before and we have to be ready to go,” Maser said. “We have to look to improve every day at practice, trying to get a little bit better every day, using this time to improve.”
