Medicine Hat Tigers fight to regain winning form before playoffs

“Maybe it looks like we’ve regressed a little bit, we haven’t. We’re way better than we were before,” said head coach Willie Desjardins, despite those late season struggles.

Desjarins attributes recent losses to strong moves made by other teams before the trade deadline in January.

Since then, the Tigers’ win percentage has dropped to 40 per cent, down from their previous 64 per cent before the deadline.

“Other teams are going to get better, they just load it up, that’s just a fact. They’re going to improve, we didn’t,” Desjardins said.

“Saying that, we believe that we could develop our young guys over that time and hopefully put us in a place where we could challenge regardless of teams built.”

Desjardins still feels good about how they prepared for playoff hockey.

“I think our team has played hard all year, but we’ve also built for the future and those are two things and sometimes they don’t coexist, but we’re trying to make them coexist,” Desjardins said.

Year-round dedication to playing hard and supporting young players has been a key goal for defenseman Nate Corbet.

“If I’m not working hard at my hardest and not putting in the hardest effort, then I can’t really live with that,” Corbet said.

“I feel like I’ve known nothing else better than to work hard every day.”

Corbet said his drive to work hard is ramping up as they head into their last four games of regular season.

Two of those will be against the Swift Current Broncos, a team the Tigers beat out of playoffs last year.

Tigers centre Tomas Mrsic says if they want to win those games, they have to come out hot in the first period.

“Obviously they’re a much better team this year, so I think going into their building is going to be a tough game for sure,” Mrsi said.

“I think we just got to bring our game and I think we can definitely beat them.”

To secure first place in the central division, the Tigers must prioritize these upcoming four games. The Broncos are dangerously close, trailing by just one point, and they have three games in hand, giving them ample opportunity to overtake the Tigers.

“We gotta come in guns a blazing and we have to do whatever it takes,” Corbet said.

“We really gotta come together, ’cause when our team comes together, we can do some very special things.”

The Tigers will be in Swift Current on Friday for game one and the Broncos will be in Medicine Hat for game two on Saturday.

by Lisa Parent

Medicine Hat Tigers fight to regain winning form before playoffs

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