NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Tigers head coach and general manager Willie Desjardins watches play in the second period of the Tigers' 6-0 preseason win over the Calgary Hitmen on Sept. 7 at Co-op Place.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
There’s a lot of outside noise around the Medicine Hat Tigers heading into the 2024-25 season. The CHL has put them atop its preseason rankings, and the chatter around the city starts at a championship banner and stops at a trip to the Rimouski, Que.-hosted Memorial Cup in late May.
Inside Co-op Place, in the office of the franchise’s winningest coach, he’s not yet convinced they have what it takes to capture that sixth WHL title.
Willie Desjardins spoke with the News on Wednesday ahead of the Tigers’ season opener Saturday at Co-op Place against the Edmonton Oil Kings. Entering their 55th season as a team, the head coach and general manager likes the team assembled but says they have a lot of work to do before they will be a complete team.
“It takes ups and downs, takes good times, takes bad times, you learn more in tough times, but you never want tough times, you always want it to be easy,” Desjardins said. “It comes from practice, it comes from trusting each other, knowing what each other is going to do, what each other can bring to the table. There’s a lot of things in it.
“We’ll find out during the year and it’s going to come down to how bad we want to try to win. How important is it to us and what kind of individual sacrifices will we make to get that win.”
The Tigers enter the year with championship aspirations, a goal they strive toward every season. Last year had the feel of the opening of a window that could see the franchise get close to its first title since 2006-07. The group started the season hot and led the Central division for a majority of the year before injuries and fatigue saw them slow down and be overtaken by the Swift Current Broncos.
They entered the playoffs as the fourth seed, falling in five games to a stingy fifth-seed Red Deer Rebels team. Desjardins says there are lessons they have to take from that season and he hopes the group has learned from it to avoid the repetition of a short season.
“Smart people never make the same mistake twice, so there’s things you take out of last year,” Desjardins said. “It would have helped us going deeper in the playoffs, for sure, playoffs are totally different than regular season. We haven’t got a chance to experience that, so that’s going to be a challenge for this year’s group.”
This season’s Tigers received a mini overhaul from last year, with four new 18-year-old defencemen brought into the mix, 20-year-old Mat Ward at forward and the swap of Tomas Mrsic to Prince Albert for the right-handed sniper Ryder Ritchie.
Desjardins recognizes his group and the outside noise of the on-paper, championship calibre team donning the orange and black. But with nine players at NHL camps to start the season and the opening night availability of forward Gavin McKenna in question, he says there’s a lot to do before they can begin thinking of playing into May.
“We have lots of work to do, we’re not a top team right now. We have top talent, but we’re not a top team,” Desjardins said.
“You have to prove it, it’s easy to say that (they’re contenders) but it’s another thing to prove it, and we haven’t proved it yet.”
Desjardins says the number of players away at NHL camps will also delay the announcement of the Tigers’ leadership group for the 2024-25 season. It could be a while, if ever, that the full Tigers’ lineup is assembled.
With Cayden Lindstrom in Columbus rehabbing with the Blue Jackets, the potential for players to represent their nation at the U17s or the World Juniors on top of the inevitable injuries that accumulate throughout a season, there will be several combinations of 18 skaters taking the ice over the course of the 68-game schedule.
As for the amount of talent they have and how they’ll find success, Desjardins says it boils down to how much each person on the bench and on the ice wants to be their best.
“You can do whatever you want as a coach, but if you don’t have really good players, you’re not going to be successful,” Desjardins said. “We’ve built a team where we’ve got some pretty good players. Once you do that, then it goes to the next part, and the next part is just their buy-in and what they want to do.
“So, will there be challenges? For sure, there will be challenges. But I hope that our goal and our focus keeps us on track and takes us to where we want to go.”
