NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Tigers forward Tyler MacKenzie lines up for a first period face-off in a 7-0 win over the Regina Pats on Mar. 11 at Co-op Place.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
There are few Medicine Hat Tigers who compete harder than Tyler MacKenzie.
The 18-year-old centreman is often tasked with a shutdown role while in games, contributing offensively on the power play and penalty kill. The energy doesn’t tone down in practice as MacKenzie doesn’t hold back from voicing his displeasure with any of his own mistakes and asks the same from his teammates.
“He’s a leader by his work ethic, he leads by example,” assistant coach Josh Maser said. “Anytime you can have that it’s great, that intensity in practice like you play, and our practices have been really good this year. Our whole team as we saw (Wednesday), there’s some fight out there in practice. That’s what we want to see. We push each other to get better and he’s a leader in that category, so that’s huge for us.”
The Red Deer product was out of the Tigers’ lineup from the end of December to the end of January. Since his return on Jan. 28, MacKenzie has five goals and 10 points in 16 games and played a large part in keeping the Regina Pats and star Connor Bedard off the scoreboard in Medicine Hat’s 7-0 win on March 11, something he’s proud of for the whole team.
“We go into the game and we don’t mark him as someone who we just want to shadow and you have to be aware and cautious when he’s on the ice,” MacKenzie said. “We did a good job of shutting him down and not only him, we took down all their lines and just played solid defensively. We tried hard, we recovered and we stuck to our structure.”
Head coach Willie Desjardins was impressed with MacKenzie’s play on both ends of the ice in that win.
“He played hard, he had some breakaways early, too, which is good,” Desjardins said. “He’s a guy who just works. He’s always working, he always contributes and he’s big for our club. He’s just a guy that’s always there.”
MacKenzie says the biggest cause of his success since returning is his linemates and his defence. He prides himself in his play in the Tigers’ own end and says it helps generate his offence. There are a lot of parts in a game that defines a good night defensively for MacKenzie, but it starts with the scoreboard.
“If it’s a loss you have to reflect on it, and even on wins there’s stuff to reflect,” MacKenzie said. “Getting takeaways, face-offs is such a key part of the game because that’s your first one-on-one battle, if you can get that one then you’re probably not going to be in the D-zone for long. But that and takeaways, entries and exit passes, battles on the walls, it’s all the little stuff and obviously shutting guys down. You have to go out there and you have to shut the guy down.”
MacKenzie and the Tigers are in Edmonton tonight taking on the Oil Kings as they open up a three-game weekend. Saturday they host Calgary before hitting the road to face the Hitmen on Sunday. With playoffs around the corner and Medicine Hat sitting in the seventh spot in the Eastern conference, Mackenzie tags this weekend as crucial for the ability to control their postseason fate.
“You never know what’s going to happen around the league with other teams but if we come in and we win all three of these games, and they’re all going to be tough games, we have to be ready every night and show up to play our game and just work hard every night,” MacKenzie said. “But these three games are crucial. We don’t really want to have that pressure of going into the last two games against Swift knowing it’s kind of Game 7, which is not a bad thing. But we just want to be able to secure your spot and then be able to play hard without overthinking too much.”
