NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Tigers forward Gavin McKenna carries the puck up ice in the first period of a 4-2 loss at Co-op Place to the Edmonton Oil Kings on Nov. 8.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
The Medicine Hat Tigers weathered a storm of a six-game stretch to end October and open November.
The Tigers played six straight games with a shorthanded lineup, from the 4-3 shootout win at Calgary over the Hitmen on Oct. 30 to the 8-4 win at Co-op Place over the Moose Jaw Warriors on Nov. 9, they had limited lineups.
In that span the Tigers were missing forwards Ryder Ritchie, Hayden Harsanyi and Cayden Lindstrom, as well as defenceman Josh Van Mulligen. Rookies Markus and Liam Ruck were also gone at the U17 Hockey Challenge, winning gold with Team Canada White.
Their D-core was able to maintain intact, with seven skaters often forcing one into the depleted forward group.
“I don’t know if people know how short we are and how hard it’s been for guys, like, our guys have been playing a lot,” Desjardins said after the 8-4 win over Moose Jaw.
“It’s been a tough mode, because we haven’t been able to practice, because guys are so tired from games, and that’s been going for a while,” Desjardins said. “It’s been a little bit of a challenge for us. It’s not in any of those games that we’re not trying, it’s just guys are coming without practising, we’re just not on top of our game. It is a challenge.”
But it was the forward group, supplemented by the signing of affiliate forward Carter Cunningham and Brayden Ryan-MacKay called up from the South Alberta Hockey Academy, that was still left with only 10 bodies to fill the lineup.
It forced head coach Willie Desjardins to lean heavily on his top line of Gavin McKenna, Oasiz Wiesblatt and Hunter St. Martin.
In that six-game stretch, where the Tigers were 3-3, McKenna averaged 25:07, Wiesblatt 22:51 and St. Martin 22:13. That’s an increased average for all three from the 13 games prior, with McKenna playing 1:44 more, Wiesblatt 3:12 and St. Martin 3:29 more.
That trio also each had an outlier outing, with McKenna playing 27:37 minutes in the 4-2 loss to the Edmonton Oil Kings on Nov. 8. Wiesblatt played 24:59 in that same game. Against the Lethbridge Hurricanes on Nov. 6, a 7-6 loss the Tigers had seven penalties in, St. Martin was deployed for 25:20.
Desjardins says their top line performed well and wore through the minutes.
“They put those minutes in and then find a way to play that good against Moose Jaw was huge, because if they didn’t play that well, we weren’t going to win,” Desjardins said. “So lots of really, really good things about them and their character. It’s unfair lots of times that when guys play those kind of minutes, they can’t play with the speed they want to play with.”
The ask of extra time in the six-game stretch went beyond the top line, with Mat Ward averaging 20:43 minutes, (1:09 higher than previous average), Marcus Pacheco seeing 5:16 more average ice time (17:29 a night) and rookie centre Shaeffer Gordon-Carroll seeing 14:22 a night in that stretch (2:25 more than he saw to start the year). Kadon McCann averaged 15:19 a night, an increase of 46 seconds.
Andrew Basha averaged 20:03 of ice time in that stretch, an average affected by a lower-body injury that knocked him out of the loss to Edmonton and has kept him out of the lineup for the two games since.
It’s been an ask of extra time from everyone that McKenna says required a buy-in of shorter shifts if they wanted to have success.
“Guys kind of bought into the short shifts a little bit, guys got comfortable with the more ice that they got and had confidence out there,” he said after the Moose Jaw win.
The Tigers had 17 skaters in a 2-1 win at Edmonton over the Oil Kings on Nov. 13 and saw a return to a full lineup on Friday against the Victoria Royals. Ritchie and Van Mulligen returned from their upper-body injuries. Forward Ethan Neutens made his Tigers debut after being acquired, along with two draft picks, from the Kelowna Rockets on Thursday in a trade that sent defenceman Nate Corbet the other way.
Medicine Hat has yet to and will still have to wait to see a full lineup until around Christmas for Harsanyi. Both Lindstrom and Basha’s returns are still to be determined.
Tigers associate coach Joe Frazer says players have stepped up into bigger roles and more minutes and they will have to continue to do so as they work to get healthy.
“As a group, we’re happy with how guys are playing, they’re stepping up, getting more opportunity and guys are taking advantage of it,” Frazer said. “That is what you want to see when guys get opportunities that they take advantage of it.
“It’s not about who’s out of the lineup, it’s about who’s in it. We have to make sure who ever is in it, we’re ready to go because, as we’ve seen every night’s competitive. Every team in this league can win on any night, so we got to make sure whoever is playing is ready.”
Time on ice stats provided by the Medicine Hat Tigers
