PHOTO COURTESY ANDY DEVLIN/EDMONTON OIL KINGS
Medicine Hat Tigers forward Noah Davidson celebrates with forward Liam Ruck and captain Bryce Pickford after scoring one of his three goals in Tuesday's 10-6 win at Edmonton over the Oil Kings.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
After picking up a couple of wins Tuesday, the Medicine Hat Tigers look for another pair of victories this weekend.
The Tigers beat the Edmonton Oil Kings 10-6 in the mid-week meeting, putting them 11 points ahead in the Central division race. They also skated to the win without taking a detour to the penalty box, while scoring on three power plays.
“That was a big win for us, a huge win,” head coach Willie Desjardins said. “We went down, had a lot of defence out of the lineup, (Gavin) Kor and (Dayton) Reschny stepped in big for us. The power play was huge and our discipline was great. So lots of good things to find a way to win.”
They won missing three defenceman, Jonas Woo, Niilopekka Muhonen and Veeti Väisänen. Woo was serving the first of a three-game suspension and both Muhonen (upper-body injury) and Väisänen (lower-body injury) are out day to day. Muhonen skated Thursday but is still day to day.
Penalties have been an issue for the Tigers this season, racking up the third most minutes with 803 PIMs on the year. Staying out of the box has been a topic of discussion, forward Noah Davidson says, one they executed Tuesday.
“What we have to do is stop taking so many penalties,” Davidson said. “When we didn’t take any penalties, we scored 10 goals on Edmonton. So I think it’s just being smart with our sticks, not complaining to the refs and just sticking to our game.”
The Tigers will look to replicate that effort this weekend with a home-and-home series against the Calgary Hitmen that starts tonight in Calgary. They enter the weekend five points back of the Prince Albert Raiders for the Eastern Conference lead.
Davidson says they’re looking to narrow the gap while also staying focused on themselves.
“If we can win these games, get four points and hopefully P.A. loses one, we close the gap a little bit,” Davidson said. “We just do that until the end of the year, hopefully we can clinch first, but we can’t get ahead of ourselves. Calgary’s one of the best teams in the league, they’ve beat lots of great teams, so we just have to stick to our game.”
The Tigers lead the season series 5-1, with this weekend’s meetings the last two of the regular season. With 11 games left on the slate, Desjardins says there’s more to prove.
“There’s lots of games left, so we have to get better as we go down the stretch,” Desjardins said. “But for us to find a way to win in Edmonton, it was big for us.”
