Now it’s time to get back to work and get improve as much as possible before the regular season kicks off at the end of the month.
The Warriors scored four straight goals after falling behind 1-0 in the first period and would go on to a 4-2 victory over the Swift Current Legionnaires on Friday night at Mosaic Place.
The contest was the second exhibition game of the campaign for Moose Jaw and came on the heels of a 5-4 loss to the Yorkton Maulers this past Tuesday. Warriors head coach Trevor Weisgerber felt his troops were much better in game two, if only just because they had another game under their belts after so much time off.
“A lot of these guys haven’t played games in a long time, and these were the first couple of games in almost a year,” he said. “So they’re going to be rusty, we just have to keep plugging away and improving… we were better than we were in Yorkton and we’ll just keep working on things in practice here and continue to shore up our systems, taking away that time and space and making it tough to play against. As the game went on it got better and we’ll keep working at ‘er.”
Austin Woodley scored the Warriors first goal with just over four minutes remaining in the first period, banging home the loose puck out of a scrum in the Legionnaires crease. The Warriors then took the lead midway through the second when Wyatt Lacoste scored on a nifty feed from Ryder Knutson,
Warriors goaltender Ethan Fechter went to work from there, first making a point-blank save on a two-on-one and minutes later robbing the Legionnaires in close during a goal-mouth scrum.
Jackson Allan extended the Warriors lead to 3-1 with 1:11 remaining in the second, ripping an absolute laser from the left faceoff circle over Brayden Schenstead’s glove side.
The Warriors struck again with 9:54 gone in the third, as Dallen Oxelgren burst in off the point, took a perfect cross-ice feed from Blake Betson and ripped a shot high and home.
Swift Current’s Carter Herman got one back with 15 seconds to play to close out scoring.
Fechter had 29 saves in the win, Schenstead had 34 stops for the Legionnaires.
The two teams are back in action Sunday when they play a neutral site game in Gull Lake, and the plan for that contest and beyond will be much the same -- work on improving, get systems in place and just gear up for their home opener on Sept. 29 against the Estevan Bears.
“We had quite a few APs in the first game and we’re starting to get some guys back now, which is nice, but we haven’t practiced with a full squad here yet,” Weisgerber said. “So hopefully this week we get a couple more guys back and have the majority of our team so we can go through things. Then we’re still looking at guys here to possibly fill another spot, so these two games have been good to see some guys.”
