No matter who you cheer for, the first team that made you a hockey fan will always be special. For me, that’s the Medicine Hat Tigers. As soon as my brother and I were old enough to understand what was happening, my dad and my uncle were taking us to games with them. Unfortunately, while we could understand the game of hockey, we more often chose not to and instead ran around the arena, giving the person who took us panic attacks as they tried to watch both the game and two kids with high energy and low attention spans.
The hockey bug never really got my brother, but it sure got me. As the years passed, I grew more and more invested in the team, cheering on the likes of Darren Helm, Kris Russell, and Tyler Ennis. Noticing my burgeoning interest, my dad and uncle taught me what to look for, who to pay attention to, and many of the finer points of the fantastic sport of hockey. It was they who gave me my first hockey cards, taught me how to pronounce the stars’ names, and always gave me the chance to talk about the sport I was growing to love.
I continued to support the Tigers after I went off to college in Saskatchewan, making sure to check in Emerson Etem, Tyler Bunz, and Hunter Shinkaruk when they came to town. But despite now being several hours apart, I continued to share the experiences with my dad. When he’d come to visit, we’d try to schedule it around when Medicine Hat was also in town so we could watch a game together. It remains some of my fondest memories of that time — just hanging out with my dad and talking hockey.
After graduating, I remained in Saskatchewan, which made catching games together increasingly harder. Before I realized it, it had been nearly a decade since we watched any game in person together, let alone the Tigers. So, after watching the Saskatoon Blades, Regina Pats, and Prince Albert Raiders, I knew I had one very important arena to cross off my list before I got much further in my journey to see every Western Hockey League (WHL) team play at their home rink.
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If this is your first time reading my journey, welcome! This is the fourth stop I’ve made in my effort to visit all 22 locales in the WHL. Junior hockey played a huge part in me becoming the hockey fan I am today, and I wanted to recapture the excitement of walking into an arena for the first time again. It’s also my way of giving back to the…
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