By Darren Steinke
Stanks On Sports
So who is the better player – Mike Modano or Trevor Linden?
If you remember this question or debate and you live in Prince Albert or Medicine Hat, you are – like me I hate to say it – old or getting older. The question does show that the paths of the Prince Albert Raiders and the Medicine Hat Tigers have been intertwined in the past.
The Raiders and Tigers – they are two of Canada’s legacy junior hockey franchises.
The Raiders were born in 1971 as a junior A team. They won the Centennial Cup as national junior A champions in 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1982. After the second Centennial Cup win, Raiders legendary head coach and general manager Terry Simpson foresaw the day was coming soon that he thought the community owned franchise in “Hockey Town North” needed a bigger challenge.
While Simpson will downplay and say he had a small role in the Raiders moving from junior A to the major junior ranks, you will admit when sitting and talking to him about those times he envisioned the great things that came for the Raiders at that time in history. The Raiders jumped to the WHL, which is one of the CHL’s three major junior circuits, for the start of the 1982-83 campaign.
They won the WHL title and the Memorial Cup as CHL champions at the end of their third season in major junior in 1984-85. Those championships happened because Simpson believed that Dan Hodgson, Dave Pasin, Emanuel Viveiros, Dale McFee, Ken Morrison and netminder Ward Komonosky would be the guys that would win those titles for the Raiders when the team was getting hammered in that first major junior campaign in 1982-83.
The Raiders would add another WHL title in 2019 with Curtis Hunt as general manager and Marc Habscheid as head coach. Dante Hannoun scored the overtime winner in Game 7 of the WHL Championship Series against the Vancouver Giants at the storied and historic Art Hauser Centre. Throughout their history, the Raiders have delivered numerous memorable moments for their fans.
The Tigers were born one year before the Raiders, and the Medicine Hat franchise joined the WHL in 1970 founded by the trio of George Maser, Joe Fisher and Rod Carry. Hockey in the 1970s was colourful to say the least, and Maser, Fisher and Carry had their share of colour. It was safe to say there were times they were kings of “The Gas City.”
In just their third season in 1972-73, the Tigers won their first WHL championship with stars Tom Lysiak, Lanny McDonald and Boyd Anderson. They played at the Memorial Cup championship tournament held that year at the fabled Montreal Forum. Going 1-1 in round robin play, the Tigers didn’t have the edge in standings tiebreakers and didn’t qualify for the tournament final.
Maser took sole ownership of the team in 1979. Before the start of the 1982-83 campaign, Maser brought in Russ Farwell to be the team’s general manager, and it would be Farwell who got the Tigers on the road to the elusive Memorial Cup.
Farwell’s Tigers collided with Simpson’s Raiders in 1985 in what is now the WHL Eastern Conference Championship Series. The Raiders claimed victory in five games in the best-of-seven series on their way to winning the WHL title and Memorial Cup.
Farwells’ Tigers met Simpson’s Raiders again in the 1986 Eastern Conference final. It was the heaviest of heavyweight showdowns with the Tigers topping the WHL at 54-17-1 and the Raiders were right on their tail at 52-17-3. The series went to a deciding Game 7 where the Tigers prevailed 4-1 in their storied and historic first home rink in The Arena.
After beating the Raiders, the Tigers at that time felt they had won the Memorial Cup. They had a hangover after that series win and fell to the Kamloops Blazers in the WHL final in five games. Linden was a young associate player call-up centre in his 15-year-old season and was with the Tigers when they fell to the Blazers.
He was born and raised in Medicine Hat and grew up idolizing the Tigers and listening to their iconic play-by-play voice in Bob Ridley on radio. Linden, whose home became a frequent team hang out, was determined that ending wouldn’t happen again.
The returnees and core players from that Tigers team showed they learned their lessons well. The Tigers won WHL and Memorial Cup titles in both 1987 and again in 1988. The first Memorial Cup title came under the guidance of colourful head coach Bryan Maxwell and the second under equally colourful head coach Barry Melrose, who had a unique new school style way of thinking.
George Maser passed away on November 29, 1990 due to a heart attack, which brought some uncertainty to the Tigers franchise in Medicine Hat. Sons Darrell and Brent Maser took over the team.
Unlike their father, Darrell and Brent developed a style where they like to stay behind the scenes and let good hockey guys run the team. They don’t get enough credit for this, but they are good community guys too.
It is common for donations to show up quietly for a charity, cause or sport organization, but they try to avoid taking any credit for that. Actually, Darrell and Brent do more nice things for people behind the scenes than most know, but they are good with staying anonymous.
They also like to win, and there was frustration when the Tigers missed the playoffs for five straight seasons from 1998 to 2002. After bringing in a string of old school head coaches, the Masers allowed then general manager Rick Carriere to make an outside the box hire for that position.
In came the classy Willie Desjardins, who was as new school as they get. Desjardins was the ultimate players’ coach with a masters in social work. Players realized Desjardins cared and understood them, and they took off. The Tigers won their fourth WHL title in Desjardins second season with the team in 2003-04.
He took on the role of general manager to go along with head coach before the 2005-06 campaign started. The Tigers won their fifth WHL title in 2007 with Brennan Bosch scoring the double overtime winner in Game 7 of the WHL Championship Series against the Giants at The Arena.
After going off to coach in the professional ranks following the 2009-10 campaign, Desjardins was brought back to the team as head coach and general manager before the 2019-20 campaign started. Now at age 68, Desjardins is still as good as ever.
The Tigers finished second overall in the WHL regular season at 47-17-3-1. In their last 39 games between the regular season and playoffs, the Tigers are an impressive 32-4-2-1.
Now, they are going to play a Raiders squad on the rise still overseen by Hunt as general manager in a best-of-seven WHL Eastern Conference semifinal series. The Raiders topped the East Division with a 39-23-5-1 mark having overcome a 2-7-2 start. They are guided by a youthful interim head coach in Ryan McDonald, who was born and raised in “Hockey Town North.”
Game 1 of the series is set for Saturday at 7 p.m. local time at the Tigers new home rink in Co-op Place.
The series will see Tigers superstar left-winger Gavin McKenna go up against Raiders star 20-year-old netminder Max Hildebrand. On Thursday, both were named among the six finalists for the Four Broncos Memorial Trophy as the WHL’s Player of the Year.
The Tigers enter the series as heavy favourites. That also leads into another interesting side plot.
The players on both respective teams really and truly believe they have the best fans in the WHL. Both fan bases are passionate, and in a players’ poll earlier this season, the Hauser was voted as the second toughest road rink in the WHL to play in. This could be a series where the club that loses at home first is in trouble.
Oh, back to the Modano versus Linden debate. Modano did have the better NHL career putting up more than 500 points than Linden did to go with a Stanley Cup title win.
In junior, Modano had more than double the regular season points than Linden did, but Linden has two WHL and Memorial Cup titles to his credit. Modano went first overall in the 1988 NHL Entry Draft, and Linden was picked second overall in that same draft.
If they met up today, maybe they could have a Maverick and Iceman moment from the movie “Top Gun: Maverick.” For those that remember and lived through those old days, you can smile, because they happened and hold on to fond memories.
It is time for the Raiders and Tigers teams of the current day to let their stories play out.
Darren Steinke is a Saskatoon-based freelance sportswriter and photographer with more than 20 years of experience covering the WHL. He blogs frequently at stankssermon.blogspot.com.
