NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Tigers forward Liam Ruck points to forward Noah Davidson in the penalty box while celebrating his second period goal in a 7-3 win Wednesday over the Brandon Wheat Kings at Co-op Place.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com
The Medicine Hat Tigers hit their Holiday break on a high note.
They beat the Brandon Wheat Kings 6-3 Wednesday at Co-op Place, heading into the Holidays on a 10-game win streak.
“They have a good team, they’re quick,” head coach Willie Desjardins said. “They’ve had a tough schedule lately, we’ve had a little bit of an easier schedule, so we probably had a little bit of advantage tonight on them. But saying that, I thought we played well.”
Wednesday was the Tigers first win against Brandon this season, losing 6-5 in overtime on Nov. 15 and 7-4 on Nov. 8. Desjardins liked his team’s resiliency in the win, answering back on two deficits and staying with the lead once they grabbed it. Captain Bryce Pickford, who played in his 200th WHL game Wednesday, scoring his league and CHL defenceman leading 25th of the season, agreed with his coach’s assessment.
“We’re so resilient as a team and when we go down in games, we’re not really too nervous or we get too hard ourselves,” Pickford said. “We know what we need to do to get back and we just do it as a team without losing control of our emotions.”
The Wheat Kings opened the scoring in the first with a power play goal.
The Tigers killed off the first 1:25 of the penalty before Jaxon Jacobsen scored with a catch-and-release shot to put the Wheat Kings ahead. Jordan Gavin and Garyson Burzynski had the assists on Jacobsen’s ninth of the year.
Medicine Hat responded less than two minutes later.
Markus Ruck broke up a breakout attempt by the Wheat Kings, dropping off to Noah Davidson who skated towards the net and roofed a backhand shot to tie the game up at 12:19. Ruck had the lone assist on Davidson’s ninth, keeping the game tied at 1-1 after 20 minutes.
Brandon again open the scoring in the second.
After a failed Tigers clear of their own end, Luke Mistelbacher picked up the loose puck and fed a streaking Nicholas Johnson who scored his 10th, giving Brandon the 2-1 lead 1:58 into the period.
The Tigers scored three straight to grab a lead.
Kyle Heger scored with a seeing-eye shot from the point to tie the game up at 2-2 5:53 after the Wheat Kings scored. Kade Stengrim and Cam Parr had the assists on his fifth.
The Tigers jumped ahead 48 seconds later for the two-goal lead. Shaeffer Gordon-Carroll fired a low shot off the pad of Jayden Kraus that rebounded right to Liam Ruck for the tap-in. Markus Ruck had the second assist on Liam’s 14th of the year.
After scoring, the younger Ruck twin skated right to the penalty box to celebrate with forward Noah Davidson who sat in the box after stepping up and fighting following a bad hit along the boards on Markus Ruck.
They grabbed a two-goal lead 49 seconds later on a rush. Yaroslav Bryzgalov dished off to Ethan Neutens who fired a shot from the top of the circles, beating Kraus for his fifth.
Brandon drew within one with 2:22 left in the period. After sustained pressure in the Tigers’ end, Burzynski sent the puck toa wide-open Carter Klippenstein at the side of the net for a tip-in goal. Wheat Kings captain Caleb Hadland had the second assist on the goal.
The Tigers appeared to re-gain a two-goal lead with less than two minutes left in the period. A jam play around the crease of Kraus saw a no-goal call as the net minder jumped up looking to swing after getting poked at. The officials called for a review of the puck’s position, sliding out from under Kraus when het stood up.
After a lengthy review, the play stood as no goal much to the dismay of Desjardins and the 3,006 in attendance. The Tigers’ head coach says it was a difficult call for the officials but he believes the goal should have counted.
” Their defence was digging it out down by a skate, but the refs can’t see it and then there’s nothing that can show that it went in before the whistle, there’s nothing to prove it,” Desjardins said. “For sure it was in the net, when it went in it’s hard to say, but it was deep in the net and we probably should have got that one, but there’s nothing they could do on the call.”
The Tigers rebounded, scoring three goals in the third period to ice the win.
On an early power play, Pickford hammered home a one-timer off a pass from Liam Ruck to make it a 5-3 lead 5:09 into the frame.
A little over the halfway-mark of the period, after a pair of penalty kills to maintain the three-goal lead, Stengrim carried the puck up ice on a three-on-two. He dished off to Tyson Moss who wired home his fifth of the season and fourth in the last two games after tallying his first WHL hat trick in the 10-2 win Dec. 13 over the Swift Current Broncos.
Goaltender Carter Casey had the second assist on Moss’ goal, his first WHL points. He made 22 saves for his ninth win on the year.
” It feels good, obviously the last two games for myself haven’t been ideal, thankfully the team bailed me out and we got a couple wins,” Casey said. “It feels good to get in there. I felt like I played better tonight and beating a high scoring team like that, Brandon is good, especially a team that we’ve struggle against.”
Jonas Woo rounded out the scoring late while at four-on-four, notching his 16th of the season, capping off the 7-3 win with 1:28 left in the game. Pickford and Kadon McCann had the assists.
The Tigers outshot the Wheat Kings 39-25, winning 39 face-offs to Brandon’s 31. They went 1-4 on the power play, Brandon was 1-3.
Wednesday’s win puts the Tigers (22-6-3-2) in first place of the Eastern conference, one point up on the East division leading Prince Albert Raiders who host the Kelowna Rockets on Friday. The Tigers are off until Dec. 27 when they head to Lethbridge to face the Hurricanes before hosting the Red Deer Rebels on Dec. 28 for a 4 p.m. contest at Co-op Place.
