2025 WHL Championship Game 3 Player To Watch: Tanner Molendyk, Medicine Hat Tigers

Spokane, Wash.- Leave it to Gavin McKenna to break records- and news.

“Gav texted me and said I was coming, but I didn’t believe him,” Tanner Molendyk grinned as he recalled finding out he had been traded to the Medicine Hat Tigers in early January. “These guys are an unbelievable group. I didn’t know what to come into, but they took me in like family, and I think it’s been special.”

Special is an excellent way to describe Molendyk’s run with the Eastern Conference Champions.

The WHL Defenceman of the Year finalist has four goals and 12 assists for 16 points in 15 playoff games to help bring the Tabbies within three wins of the team’s first WHL Championship since 2007.

He’s also on a 10-game point streak, highlighted by a one-goal, three-assist effort in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Championship against Lethbridge.

It’s the kind of performance a team dreams of when bringing in a highly-touted NHL prospect at the Trade Deadline.

“He’s beaten us enough that I knew that he was a guy we’d want,” Tigers General Manager and Head Coach Willie Desjardins said. “He wanted to get this far. It was important for him. It’s strange, sometimes when you bring in new guys… They don’t necessarily want to be there as much. Maybe they want to go pro. But he had a burning desire to do things that he hadn’t done, and that was huge for us.”

For Molendyk, the opportunity to hoist the Ed Chynoweth Cup is a long-fought battle.

The 6-foot, 181-pound blueliner had spent four seasons building a reputation as a Saskatoon Blades star and fan favourite.

But playoff runs had ended in disappointment- first, a sweep at the hands of the then-Winnipeg ICE in 2023, and then a historic Game 7 overtime heartbreaker against the eventual 2024 Champion Moose Jaw Warriors.

“There’s no words, really,” Molendyk reflected. “I mean, after that Lethbridge series, Volotovskii and I (who also joined Medicine Hat as a part of the Molendyk trade in January) gave each other a hug and said, ‘We finally did it. ‘”

But the job isn’t finished.

The 2023 first-round pick of the Nashville Predators hopes to launch his Tigers back to the win column in Game 3 of the WHL Championship Series after a 6-2 loss in Game 2 at the hands of the Spokane Chiefs.

“It’s a challenge,” Molendyk said of containing the league’s highest scoring team. “They’re deep. They’ve got a good forward group, but we’ve got the D-men back there to take them on and I think we’re doing a pretty good job.”

Molendyk will square off against his former Hlinka Gretzky Cup teammate (and our Spokane Game 3 Player to watch), Colorado Avalanche prospect Saige Weinstein, when the Tigers and Chiefs hit the ice for Game 3 at 7:00 p.m. PST on Tuesday, May 13.

TSN will carry the game in Canada, while fans in the United States and around the world can tune in on Victory+.