PHOTO COURTESY ROB WILTON/VANCOUVER GIANTS
Medicine Hat Tigers forward Liam Ruck battles for the puck in front of the Tigers' bench in a 3-1 loss Sunday at Vancouver to the Giants.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
The Medicine Hat Tigers have hit some speed bumps in the early parts of their B.C. division trip.
The Tigers lost the first two contests on their six-game trip through B.C., falling 5-4 Saturday to the Victoria Royals and 3-1 Sunday to the Vancouver Giants.
Head coach Willie Desjardins liked his team’s game in both losses.
“The teams are all close, we won a couple games at home where our goaltending was outstanding and a couple teams have had great performances from their goaltending and we lost,” Desjardins said. “Do we need to get better, yes we do, we have to. But there’s good signs, lots of different guys stepping up on different nights.”
Saturday’s loss saw the Tigers lead 2-1 after 20 minutes before Victoria rattled off three second-period goals to lead 4-3 through 40. Medicine Hat tied it up before the Royals scored for the win. Markus Ruck (first), Misha Volotovskii (sixth), Bryce Pickford (seventh) and Dayton Reschny (third) scored in the loss, Jordan Switzer made 23 saves.
On Sunday, the Giants scored twice in the first period before Noah Davidson scored his third of the year in the second period. Carter Casey made 18 saves.
The Tigers have been without defenceman Jonas Woo to start the road trip, Desjardins had no firm status for the 19-year-old. Forward Cam Parr was a late scratch Sunday due to illness. There’s a flu bug going through the team, Desjardins says, coming at the worst time as they’ve spent more time on the bus than a majority of the weekends all season.
Whether it’s the flu or injury, Desjardins says the vacant spots bring more opportunities.
“You can’t get a worse time to get it when you’re travelling, so that’s not great, but it’s like anything else, it gives different guys an opportunity,” Desjardins said. “If some guys are under the weather, other guys get opportunities. So is it a challenge? For sure it’s a challenge.”
The Tigers have Monday and Tuesday off before their next action comes as they face the Prince George Cougars on Wednesday. Desjardins expects it to be a tough game, Prince George is tied for the B.C. division lead with the Royals and the Penticton Vees.
“Everything you do is you play hard every night and you get up to hopefully find ways to win,” Desjardins said. “The last couple games we didn’t play super hard, but we played good in Victoria and we played good (Sunday). So all we can do is play hard and we’ll see what happens. Like, you don’t win all the games you play hard, but hopefully we’ll get that one.”
Heading into the weekend the Tigers reassigned forwards Max Sullivan and Brayden Ryan-MacKay to AJHL teams. Sullivan is playing for the Calgary Canucks and Ryan-MacKay for the Drumheller Dragons.
The moves get the Tigers down to 25 roster spots. After Wednesday, the Tigers will head to Kamloops to face the Blazers on Friday before visiting Kelowna and the 2026 Memorial Cup host Rockets on Saturday. The trip wraps up on Monday, Oct. 27 at Penticton against the Vees.
