It was a rare showing of emotion from Shaun Clouston.
The Medicine Hat Tigers’ head coach and general manager is known more for his conservative approach when it comes to celebrating a win. But as the final few seconds ticked off the clock in his team’s impressive and unanticipated series sweep last week, the coach pumped his fist and gently clapped his hands while his players celebrated.
“It was a little bit surreal,” Clouston recalled Wednesday. “I had a few people comment to me how excited I was on the bench.”
The emotion he showed was justifiable. The Tigers had just done the unthinkable, sweeping the MasterCard Memorial Cup host Saskatoon Blades in the opening round of the Western Hockey League playoffs. Few gave his team a chance to win the series, let alone in a four-game sweep.
“I knew we had a great team that has the capability of beating them, but never did it cross my mind that we might sweep the team that’s hosting the Memorial Cup,” captain Hunter Shinkaruk said.
The Tigers will forever be the answer to a trivia question as the team that swept the MasterCard Memorial Cup hosts. Their season continues with the first game of their next playoff series against the Edmonton Oil Kings on Friday, while the players they eliminated are at home resting and trying to understand where it all went wrong.
Much has been made of Medicine Hat’s stunning series sweep over Saskatoon in the days since the dust settled. Most of the emphasis focused on the Blades’ monumental collapse, without much mention of the team that pulled off the feat. Those are the breaks when you’re a No. 7 seed, a team that once was a question just to make the playoffs.
It’s familiar territory for the tabbies.
“Coming into the year, we didn’t get a lot of credit,” Shinkaruk said. “Maybe we don’t get the respect that we deserve, but in the locker room, we’re a tight bunch and we’re very confident.”
The Blades fell victim to a team that was already playing playoff hockey. The playoffs were never a foregone conclusion in the Gas City, and Clouston’s squad had just seven carry-overs from last year’s team.
There were growing pains in Medicine Hat this season. A slow start put the Tigers behind the eight-ball early, and by Christmas, Clouston was using seven-game increments as a mock playoff series with different opponents.
By the time the playoffs finally started, the Tigers were a playoff-weathered team in Clouston’s opinion.
“It wasn’t looking at this as some seven-game series that we had to beat the Memorial Cup (hosts) and we had to win in their building at least once,” Clouston said. “There’s a formula and we have to follow it and be as strict with it and as committed to it as we’ve ever been.”
The Tigers realized they needed to be, in a word, perfect. Their defensive game-plan consisted of forcing Blades players to the outside, and allowing goaltender Cam Lanigan a chance to see the shots and pounce on his rebounds.
“A lot of the success I had is kudos to our team play,” said Lanigan, who posted a 1.00 goals against average and .976 save percentage in the series. “Our defencemen boxed out a lot of their big and strong forwards.”
“When you have every guy in your locker room buy into the concepts that we’re trying to do, something special happens,” Shinkaruk added. “I can’t say enough about how well our team played.”
By the time the Blades realized what hit them, it was already too late. After each win, Clouston gave his players a couple hours to enjoy it before emphasizing they needed to reset and refocus for the next one.
Now a week after the stunning upset, Clouston finds himself preparing for the next series while still coming to grips with how successful the last one went.
“It took a while for it to sink in,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s totally sunk in.”
“I remember after just smiling and I couldn’t really put it into words what we just did,” Shinkaruk said. “That’s the Memorial Cup team and we have the second-most amount of rookies by any team in the WHL this year. It was pretty special and you know it was something that took a couple days to set in.”
Their label as underdogs is going to follow them in their next series against the defending Ed Chynoweth Cup champions. The Tigers shouldn’t have any difficulty refocusing. As Shinkaruk puts it, “We have to realize we haven’t won anything yet.”
But they have won respect. By sweeping the MasterCard Memorial Cup host Blades, the Tigers won’t be taken lightly again this year, even if their accomplishments get overshadowed by another team’s shortcomings.
“At the end of the day,” Shinkaruk said, “that’s the media’s job to make a story out of it.”