MEDICINE HAT, AB — It’s been a season of firsts for the Medicine Hat Tigers.
The team took home the Western Hockey League Central Division title for the first time in 10 years.
This year also marked the first playoff game to have been played in the Canalta Centre.
That series, against the Brandon Wheat Kings, had more than a dozen players play their first playoff game.
But management with the Canalta Centre are hoping for their first Tigers sellout.
“Once we’ve sold out the lower bowl here, which is about 4,044-ish, somewhere in that number there, once we’ve got that and the demand is there, we’ll gladly open that upper bowl,” said general manager Peter Jelinski.
WATCH: Peter Jelinski speaks with CHAT Television about the possibility of a packed Canalta Centre
Tigers fans lined up inside the Canalta Centre Monday morning, waiting to get their hands on tickets for Game 7 against the Lethbridge Hurricanes.
Selling out wasn’t hard for the Regina Pats.
When fans heard they’d see a Game 7against Swift Current, tickets to the game sold out within a matter of minutes.
“Having a team that wins 52 games and has the best regular season in franchise history in 99 years has really resulted in a huge response from our fans,” said Phil Andrews with the Pats, who added this is the 20th game the team has sold out. “People just ran to the box office and online and got them as quick as they could.”
The Tigers record isn’t far off from the Pats, having 51 wins and the Central Division title.
When comparing the population size between the two cities, Regina is more than double the size of the gas city.
But the Highway 3 rivalry is something Regina doesn’t have.
“The rivalry helps,” Jelinski said. “There’s a lot of people here, there’s that little animosity between Lethbridge and Medicine Hat, but Lethbridge themselves brings down a large group of fans for every one of their games.”
It’s not just management hoping for a sell out crowd.
The players can feel a difference between a regular season game and the playoffs.
“We know Lethbridge is going to bring quite a few fans out so we’re going to need to get the majority of our fans out here so that kind of energy is in our favour and we feel that way the whole game,” said Max Gerlach, Tigers forward.
“You still have to stay focused and you kind of tune everything out,” said Tigers goaltender Michael Bullion. “But when the crowds behind you, you definitely start living it up. It gets the blood flowing.”
“There’s been some quiet games this year where there have been goals and it’s like ‘did we score’?” said Jelinski, hinting at the lower attendance numbers home games saw earlier in the year. “But this year, for the playoffs here, it’s been fantastic.”
