The Medicine Hat Tigers will be competing for Canadian major junior hockey’s richest prize on Sunday night in Rimouski.

On Tuesday evening, the Tigers battled the Ontario Hockey League champion London Knights in a battle of undefeated teams at the 2025 Memorial Cup. Medicine Hat ended up skating to a scrappy 3-1 victory over London to punch their ticket to Sunday night’s tournament final.

The Knights entered the game with wins in eight consecutive Memorial Cup round robin games – dating back to the 2016 tournament. And they opened the scoring 3:34 into the first period, as Kasper Halttunen tipped a Sam Dickinson shot past Tigers netminder Harrison Meneghin to make it 1-0 London.

The Tigers regrouped after the first period and rallied to tie things up 5:11 into the second. As Medicine Hat controlled the London zone, the Knights attempted to clear the puck up the middle. Tanner Molendyk held the puck in at the blueline and flung the puck on net. London netminder Elliott Austin made the initial save, but Medicine Hat’s Ethan Neutens buried the rebound to tie the game at 1-1.

1:17 into the third period, Medicine Hat grabbed the lead. Once again, their third line cashed in off a nice bit of offensive zone play. After an attempted passing sequence didn’t quite find its mark, Tigers forward Mathew Ward collected the puck, spun around in front of the London net and tucked the puck past Elliott to make it 2-1 Tigers.

The Tigers did a good job minimizing London’s pressure for the remainder of the game. London pulled their goaltender for the extra attacker and Ryder Ritchie scored on the empty net with 11 seconds left – his third goal in three round robin games – to make it a 3-1 final in favour of Medicine Hat.

Flames prospect Andrew Basha lined up on the second line for Medicine Hat alongside Cayden Lindstrom and Hunter St. Martin. Now, Lindstrom is just recently returned from 13 months away dealing with an injury, and so while he was playing on back-to-back nights the Tigers used a bit of load management. As a result, Basha and St. Martin played with a rotation of centres, particularly in the second half of the game, often seeing time with first line centre Oaziz Wiesblatt or fourth line pivot Shaeffer Gordon-Carroll.

As a consequence of the jumble of centres, Basha and St. Martin were solid if unspectacular. If nothing else, Basha did a nice job not trying to do too much in a pretty tight-checking game, opting to make smart, safe plays rather than trying to force plays. He was credited with a single shot on net in this game.

Medicine Hat finishes the round robin with a perfect 3-0 record and advance directly to Sunday night’s championship game to determine the 2025 Memorial Cup champion.

Their opponent will be determined by the next two games:

The WHL hasn’t won the Memorial Cup since Edmonton captured it back in 2014 – it was so long ago that Curtis Lazar was still in junior. The Tigers are hoping to end the Dub’s cold streak on Sunday night.