With the way the Western Hockey League regular season started for the Moose Jaw Warriors and the difficulties the local crew went through in their first couple of games, there was always an overwhelming theme.
Just wait and see.
With a slew of elite players at NHL training camps, reinforcements were on the way. Then forward Jagger Firkus and Brayden Yager returned, followed not long after by the surprise re-assigning of forward Martin Rysavy. And then the final piece, captain Denton Mateychuk, made his way back this week.
In between all that, the Warriors pulled off a major trade, bringing in NHL-drafted defenceman Kalem Parker and forward Brayden Schuurman from the Victoria Royals.
And wouldn’t you know it, the wins started adding up.
The Warriors head into their weekend games against Lethbridge and Prince Albert with victories in four of their last five contests and have moved into second place in the Eastern Conference -- exactly where they were hoping to be when the season began.
“I think there’s a lot of excitement in the dressing room with the new bodies,” head coach Mark O’Leary said after practice on Wednesday afternoon. “The ones we traded for are certainly huge additions and the guys who have come back from NHL camps make a big difference. We’ve had some good success with Yags and Firkus and to get Mateychuk and Rysavy back in the lineup as well, it makes us more of a veteran group. Our practices have looked better and we’re expecting our games will look better too.”
Heading into the campaign, the Warriors always had confidence they could contend this season. The return of their NHL core bolstered that hope, and the trade sent things into overdrive.
“I think it sends a message to the coaching staff and to the players,” OLeary said of the deal, which saw the Warriors send forward Ben Riche and a suite of WHL draft picks the Royals’ way. “When a general manager gives up assets like he did, it’s a vote of confidence that we believe in the group and we believe in what you can do. We want to reciprocate that trust and show that we are worth the investment, and that’s the thought process with the players and the coaches. We’re excited about the opportunity, but with opportunity comes the responsibility to win some hockey games.”
That’s not to say things will change at all when it comes to the team’s approach, as the goal remains the same: improve as much as you can every day.
“Our team needs to be better than it was last week and next week we’ll say the same thing and that hasn’t changed,” O’Leary said. “We don’t want to see our best hockey in October, we want to see our best hockey in March and to get there we have to be willing to get better every game.”
The Canadian Hockey League has taken notice of Moose Jaw from day one, with the Warriors a fixture in the CHL Top 10 through all three sets of early-season rankings, including the fifth spot in the most recent list.
“All the rankings mean at this point in the season is that you have a lot of NHL-calibre players on your team,” O’Leary said. “It’s too early to really gauge even in the standings, it’s how many games we’ve played compared to other teams and it’s all different. So it’s just projection over what we have for players, but that’s good too because it brings them up.”
One thing that’s become apparent in the early going of the campaign is the amount of parity in the WHL thus far. While it took a few weeks into the season for every team to have a loss on their ledger in 2022-23, that measure was reached by the end of the first full week of play this time around.
That means continuing to win will likely be paramount all season if a team wants to remain in contention.
“You have one bad weekend and all of a sudden you’re staring up the standings at a whole bunch of teams,” O’Leary said. “I think that’s fun, there are a lot of teams in a similar situation as us and it hasn’t been that way the couple of years where one or two teams just run away with it.
“It’ll be a little bit different this year, there are a lot of teams we have respect for and can take a run at it, but we want to be one of those teams.”
This weekend is the latest step in that direction, as the Warriors take on two teams that have early season wins over them in Lethbridge and Prince Albert.
“Now that we have everyone back here, it’s been nice to get some practices in with everyone and now play some games in front of our fans and show our actual team,” O’Leary said. “We believe we have something special here and we’re looking forward to the homestand.”
The Warriors and Hurricanes go toe-to-toe on Friday night, followed by the Raiders visiting the Moose Jaw Events Centre Saturday. Puck drop for both games is 7 p.m.
