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By Chris Brown

Pregame: Tigers at Blades

Dec 13, 2022 | 1:06 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – The Medicine Hat Tigers are in Saskatoon tonight, their final chance to avoid a season sweep at the sticks of the Blades.

The teams have met three times this year, the last being just two weekends ago at the Tigers Teddy Bear Toss game. The fur flew late in the game but it wasn’t enough.

The Tigers fell 2-1, their third one-goal loss of the season against the Blades.

The Tigers (11-15-4-1) sit fourth in the Central Division and ninth in the Eastern Conference. The Blades (21-5-0) are second in the East Division and third in the Eastern Conference.

This is the first of two games in two nights in Saskatchewan and four games in five nights overall for the orange and black.

IN THE COMMUNITY

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IN THE COMMUNITY

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Andrew Basha leads the Tigers with 30 points and says everyone needs to be going for the Tabbies to get the eight points available before the Christmas break.

“This is a group that you know we play four lines and you know we use our speed and I think we take over you know third periods,” he said Monday. “When we’re playing good, we’re wearing defensemen down with all our speed. so we just have to play with speed play hard and just play with our structure.”

Puck drop is at 6 p.m. MT from the SaskTel Centre and you can hear all the action live on Wild 94.5 with voice of the Tigers Gino De Paoli.

Bounceback season

Not even halfway through the season, their 11 wins match last season’s total and their 27 points are already one better than the trying 2021-22 campaign.

Head coach Willie Desjardins is pleased with the turnaround and thinks it will continue.

“It was more than a bit of a tough year it was a really hard year for the team, for the franchise, for the city,” he said after practice on Monday. “So I think it means a lot but more than that, we’re beating good teams. There’s some really good teams out there that we’re beating and that just shows how far we’ve come as a young group and I expect to get better as we go along.”