Desjardins: I want to find a way to win
There was no moment throughout the Medicine Hat Tigers season that was the toughest for head coach Willie Desjardins.
He said they knew every day it was a tough season because of the choices the club made for the future.
“I think that we inflicted some of that upon ourselves with our trades,” Desjardins said. “It’s not like we didn’t know this might happen but you always have to have the big picture in mind. We could have done stuff and not been quite so bad this year. We could, but then we’re going to be bad for three years or four years, and that’s just a choice we made.
“There’s nothing enjoyable about it, I want to win. That’s what I want to do. I want to find a way to win, I want a championship and I thought this was the best way to get a championship.”
The Tigers had a record of 5-18-3-1 when they pulled the trigger and traded away their leading scorer Lukas Svejkovsky on Dec. 27 for a trio of draft picks, signalling a change of approach. Medicine Hat was in the middle of a 16-game losing streak when they made the move. Desjardins spoke to the News on Wednesday ahead of a scouting trip to Germany for the U18 world championship. He said they could have made moves to push for a playoff spot but wanted to avoid mediocrity because they would not have been able to match up with other teams’ top lines.
“One of the things with our lineup, if you look at the teams we played, we got beat by the other team’s top line on numerous occasions,” Desjardins said. “We just couldn’t stop the top line. If you would have had (Cole) Sillinger and Lucas in there, then we can match up fine, it’s totally different. You make the playoffs, you’re in the middle of the pack. But we didn’t have that, then so what do you want to do? We could have traded some good young players and got older but that would just keep us in the same spot down the road.
“That’s not what I want to do. I don’t want to have a lot of years of being average. Who’s to say what next year brings if we don’t have lots of growth. We have to see, but it’s our best chance of being good down the road, by far.”
The Tigers finished the season with a franchise worst 11-53-3-1 record, which wore not only on the team but the faithful fans. When asked what he would say to ease fans’ minds after the difficult year, Desjardins chuckled and compared his mind to theirs.
“(It) takes a little bit to ease (the mind), but you can’t until you see it (on the ice),” Desjardins said. “We can say whatever we want, it’s what we show that counts.”
Desjardins said ahead of his return to the Tigers’ bench in 2019 he had choices to go other places but chose Medicine Hat because of the people.
“I knew that people were great with us in the good times, our fans were good. We packed the arena and it was exciting. I didn’t know how they’d be if there was bad times, I never expected bad times. But they’ve been amazing in bad times, like I mean amazing,” Desjardins said.
“For sure there’s some fans disappointed, I would be disappointed, too, if I was them. I don’t blame them for be disappointed or being upset. They come to the rink to get away from their problems, not to find more problems. Saying that, they were incredibly loyal and patient with us, way more than they could have been.”
When Desjardins joined the Tigers for the first time in 2002, he took over a club which had missed the playoffs in five straight seasons. In his first eightyear stint, they were WHL champions twice and were in the conference finals an additional two times. When comparing that team to this Tigers roster, Desjardins said the current team is a year behind the former.
“Our big strength right now is the 17s and 16s, so that might put us a year behind that run,” Desjardins said. “Saying that, we still want to speed it up.”
The Tigers were rewarded for their tough season Thursday when they won the WHL draft lottery, and as a result will pick first overall in May’s prospect draft.
Desjardins said it’s too early for him to look ahead to next season as he’s still processing this one and focusing on offseason steps. As the spring turns into summer and the season falls further in the rearview mirror, the failures of 2021-22 will still weigh on the Tigers’ winningest coach because he says he can’t accept being average.
“I always talk to the players and say, if you can accept being average, you’ll be average. That’s what you can accept. So if I can accept what happened this year, I will get lots more than if I can’t. So, I better figure out a way so that doesn’t happen again,” Desjardins said.
The Tigers performed their exit meetings with all players in the final week leading up to their last game. That gave them an opportunity to talk with their guys about how their individual seasons went and what they should work on heading into next. Desjardins cited one unnamed player who fired back with a good answer.
“I’ll ask the players and they’ll say, ‘I’m going to do this, this and this.’ I’ll say, You told me that before and you haven’t done it. Why should I expect it to be any different this summer? You’ve had two years, why would I expect it to be different,” Desjardins said. “The one good answer I got was, ‘you’ll see in September.’
“For us, we have to find a way to put on a good product, we got to find a way to make the playoffs next year, and we’re going to start finding a way to be able to be a championship team again.”