The ice at Co-op Place stands ready for Medicine Hat Tigers hockey in this News file photo taken July 30. Bids are due Sept. 20 for the five teams, including the Medicine Hat Tigers, who have shown an intent to host the 2026 Memorial Cup.--NEWS FILE PHOTO
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Medicine Hat’s Memorial Cup bid is riding high as the deadline nears.
The six-person committee, led by chair Brent Sauer, is working alongside the City of Medicine Hat and the Tigers as they put together the pitch for the rights to host the 2026 tournament.
Sauer, who served as director of hockey operations and facilities when Medicine Hat hosted the U17 Hockey Challenge in 2019, says there’s a lot of confidence the bid they are putting together for the Sept. 20 deadline will rival the four other teams in the race for the prestigious event.
“We’ve got a legacy, we’ve got a great, great group of people around the table,” Sauer said. “The city has been providing us a lot of help and a lot of knowledge and expertise. We have people within the community, so we know we can showcase our city and our community very, very well.
“We’ve got a lot of confidence in our volunteer base because we’ve hosted several major events in this city where we’ve had anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 volunteers, we know that won’t be a concern. We feel pretty good about it.”
Medicine Hat’s bid is going up against similar interest from Brandon, Spokane, Kelowna and Lethbridge. The city has already committed $1.25 million in cash and up to another $655,000 in “in kind” contributions, such as use of Co-op Place for the tournament, providing bus shuttle service and providing support to the bid committee with promotional material.
Co-op Place, built in 2015 with 7,100 seats available, is the newest of all five cities. Sauer says the CHL has already toured the Tigers’ rink. When asked if there was any concern about the location of Co-op Place, an often overused and cheap slant from those outside the market, Sauer says they had no qualms.
“They like it, it checked off almost all the boxes so that’s a good thing for us moving forward,” Sauer said. “They are fine with where Co-op Place is. They expressed zero concerns about that, it never even came up in conversation.”
The Tigers boast the top roster of the five teams heading into the 10-day tournament, led by Gavin McKenna, the projected first overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft. Both Kelowna and Spokane’s team’s are featured around freshly drafted players in Tij Iginla and Berkly Catton respectively, both who could make the jump to the NHL next season before the tournament.
Part of the requirement for bids is the involvement of alumni, something Medicine Hat has in spades, Sauer says. That group, led by legendary broadcaster Bob Ridley, will play a large role in the tournament if awarded to the city.
Sauer says they aren’t getting too far ahead of themselves in planning an event, but says they have preliminary work in place for what the event as a whole could look like beyond the rink.
“We have had to kind of submit some information regarding the arrival of the Memorial Cup, because that’s a big event,” Sauer said. “We have expressed some ideas on what that’s going to look like and the community events surrounding that.”
The bid gets submitted a day before the Tigers’ kick off the 2024-25 season at Co-op Place against the Edmonton Oil Kings. Before that happens, the bid committee will meet alongside corporate services members of the city who will help “dress up” the formal bid and review the video showcasing the Tigers team and the City of Medicine Hat.
Once that’s done, Sauer says they won’t just sit on their hands until the winning bid is announced in late November. They’ll start putting together the host organizing committee so they can hit the ground running when, not if, he says, they win.
“We don’t use the word if around our table, we talk about when,” Sauer said. “When we are awarded the Memorial Cup.”
After bids are submitted, the CHL will narrow the submission to a short list, and those teams remaining will be contacted for a 90-minute phone call from the CHL’s five-person committee to answer any questions. Sauer expects that phone call would happen around the end of October, and would provide a challenge they look forward to.
“It’s one of those things where we’re really thankful that the Tigers organization did submit the application to host, because without them we couldn’t do it,” Sauer said. “They took that step, which was a huge step to do and we feel good that we can take the next step.”
