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Local WHL club reflects on links with former star
DARREN STEINKE
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Trevor Linden may always be “Captain Canuck,” but he will always a key figure in the history of his hometown Medicine Hat Tigers.
On Wednesday at a press conference in Vancouver, the 38-year-old standout with the Vancouver Canucks officially announced his retirement from the NHL. Besides being remembered as a great Canuck, Linden will also go down as one of the best players ever to suit up for the Tigers.
“He is such a role model and an ambassador for the game,” said current Tigers head coach and general manager Willie Desjardins, who guided the club years after Linden graduated from the team. “He speaks highly of people. He is very positive.
“For us, that kind of epitomizes what we want our players to be like positive in the press and well spoken. He is just a really quality individual.”
Linden first joined the Tigers as a 15-year-old in the 1985-86 season. He appeared in five regular season games and six playoff games collecting three goals. Over the next two seasons, he scored 60 goals and 86 assists in 139 regular season games helping the Tigers win the Memorial Cup titles in 1987 and 1988, and then he left for the Canucks.
Dean Chynoweth, who was the captain of the 1988 championship winning squad, remembers Linden being an impact person in the club’s dressing room at age 16. Besides the leadership ability, Linden was loaded with skills.
“He was a very good skater for a big guy,” said Chynoweth. “He has a good shot. He competed every shift and every practice.”
Wayne McBean, who was a star defenceman for the Tigers in those days and MVP of the 1987 Memorial Cup tournament, said Linden was greatly important to the club off the ice. He said the Linden house used to be one of the team’s favourite hangouts.
“The rest of us had to live with billets,” said McBean. “A lot of the billets kind of shied away from having a lot of the players over.
“The Linden family always had an open door for all the guys coming over. It was one big happy family there for the whole Tiger team with the Linden family.”
During his speech at his retirement press conference, Linden thanked Russ Farwell, who was the Tigers general manager through most of the 1980s, for pointing him in the right direction.
“That is great that Trev would mention that,” said Farwell. “I am sure he thanked a lot of people.
“He was a driven focused player right from the beginning. I really can’t think that I put Trevor Linden on track.”
While it has been years since Linden played in Medicine Hat, he still found a way to positively impact his old WHL squad during the 2007 Memorial Cup tournament in Vancouver.
The Tigers needed a win in the final round robin game against the host Giants to make the championship match. Linden spoke to the team before the game telling the players that basically they had the skill, the heart and to just go out and play.
Then feisty right-winger Derek Dorsett scored the lone goal in the 1-0 win.
“It just fired me up,” said Dorsett. “I don’t know what it was that got me going, but it did.” |
