Lighting the lamp: THE GOAL THAT STARTED IT ALL


RYAN MCCRACKEN


rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com Twitter: MHNMcCracken


On a fall evening in 1970, a young man named Keith Silvernagle lit a lamp that’s still burning bright in the Gas City.


As one of the 20 young men tasked with putting Medicine Hat on the hockey map, Silvernagle hit the ice for the franchise’s very first game on Oct. 15, 1970 against the Edmonton Oil Kings and quickly wrote his name into the


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record books by netting the first goal in Tigers history.


“It’s hard to believe that it was 50 years ago. I remember everything just like yesterday,” said Silvernagle. “It was just one of those things, I just said to the guys, ‘I’m fast. I’m going to go around this defenceman,’ and I told Gerry (Petryk, linemate), ‘When you hear me holler, you give it to me.’ Then I guess we just kind of did that and the next thing I knew it was in the net.”


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Congratulations to the Medicine Hat Tigers on 50 exciting years in our community. We look forward to all your successes in the upcoming seasons. Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!


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Fifty years later that goal is still being talked about by fans and former players alike. While Silvernagle admits it didn’t feel like he made history at the time, discussion around that first goal has followed him to this day — even into his hometown of Biggar, Sask.


“There’s a lady here — she was in Medicine Hat for 30 years and now she’s in the home up here with my mother — believe it or not she watched me play hockey. It’s uncanny how small this world is,” he said. “At the time, believe me, I didn’t think much of it — that it would have this kind of an impact on people.”


The Tigers were brand new to the WHL in 1970, but Silvernagle had already spent


part of a season in the league with the Swift Current Broncos before he was informed that he had been traded to the newly formed Tigers in 1969. Given the team wouldn’t take the ice for another year, Silvernagle and many of the soon-to-be Tigers laced up their skates with the Alberta Junior Hockey League’s Ponoka Stampeders for the 1969-70 season, where they started building chemistry and relationships that would last a lifetime.


“We had no team yet, so all the players that were picked or drafted, so to speak, we all played in Ponoka one year in the Alberta Junior League,” he said. “That’s where me and Stan Weir and Donny Brennan and Jim McCrimmon and those guys, that’s where we became friends. I played with them the first year in Ponoka and then we all, as a group, went down to Medicine Hat.”


Silvernagle went on to score 20 goals with 31 assists in Medicine Hat’s first season on the ice. He then headed south to compete for a year with the Eastern Hockey League’s Suncoast Suns before hanging up his skates. Although he ended up back in Biggar, Silvernagle says he nearly opted to settle down in the


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