The Moose Jaw Warriors knew they were going to have to be a better team in Game 2 of their Western Hockey League Eastern Conference semifinal with the Winnipeg Ice, and as it turns out, that’s exactly what happened.
It all started with a wildly successful power play in the first 10 minutes of the game, leading to a quick 4-0 lead, and continued as the Warriors' penalty kill would hold Winnipeg to a single goal on nine -- yes, nine -- power plays through the night.
As a result, the Warriors have stolen home-ice advantage in the best-of-seven series and will be looking to keep the roll going when the series returns to Moose Jaw on Tuesday night.
“I think we kind of backed into that one in the third period a little bit, but we’ll certainly take the win,” said Warriors head coach Mark O’Leary. “We deserved to win the game, we gave them a bit of juice with too many power plays, obviously, and had to dig in to finish ‘er off, but I’m real proud of the group tonight with how they bounced back.”
The most important part of the process early on was getting off to a good start. A Ryder Korczak goal inside the first 90 seconds was exactly that, as were the power play goals from Brayden Yager and Martin Rysavy that made it a four-goal game before the game had reached the midpoint of the first period.
“We wanted to have a better start tonight, I think we were the second-best team in the first 10 minutes of Game 1, we wanted to flip the script and I thought we did that,” O’Leary said. “I think we were just a little bit quicker to get to pucks and to move pucks and that really worked out to our advantage.”
It certainly didn’t hurt that Winnipeg took a five-minute major and a minor penalty within 27 seconds of each other, but it was still a matter of the Warriors taking advantage of what was given to them.
“The power plays early on in the game, you never know if that’s going to be the biggest moment in the game, and that was certainly it,” O’Leary said. “The guys executed, they did the job and that proved to be the difference.”
Getting off to that kind of a start was always a hope, and it was just a matter of doing things the right way and letting the opportunities open up through that kind of play -- essentially the same thing that’s worked for the team from the start of the season.
“It’s about doing something really well early on,” O’Leary explained. “We talk about the same things over and over, it’s hockey and a game of reminders and not every night you’re going to be at your best. But there were certain areas we needed to clean up, we did those early on.”
Things looked like they were going to be fairly comfortable until the third period, when Winnipeg threw everything they had at the Warriors. They scored their only power play goal 1:07 into the period, but the Warriors were able to kill off a pair of other penalties in the frame and ended up holding the Ice to a single goal on their nine chances, an impressive feat against the eighth-ranked power play in the WHL in the regular season.
“One-for-nine is a heck of a job for the guys and certainly not a habit we want to get into, but at the same time there are going to be different games during a series, and tonight it was a special teams battle,” O’Leary said. “We knew coming in that was one of the bullet points that was going to be key in this series, and while I didn’t like all the penalties we took, I really liked our response.”
The key was just good old-fashioned hard work and determination, as the Warriors were able to limit Winnipeg’s looks and opportunities, and when they did have chances, Connor Ungar was there to make the save.
“We needed everybody, we needed the killers, we needed our defenceman and we certainly needed our goaltender.” O’Leary said. “The guys dug in and I thought we were real detailed in our penalty kill, we were hard and heavy when we had to be.”
The Warriors lost defenceman Matthew Gallant to injury on the play that led to the five-minute major and later lost overage rearguard Logan Dowhaniuk to a hit-from-behind. Both players were up and around after the game and will be reevaluated in advance of Game 3.
Eric Alarie remains out with injury, and Robert Baco served the second game of a three-game suspension for a goaltender interference major in Game 4 against Lethbridge.
Now, the series is coming home, and the Warriors aren’t expecting things to get any easier.
“We know we’ll have to be ready, they’re going to come out hard wanting to get a win in Game 3 and we’ll have to make sure we’re ready to go right from the start like we were tonight,” O’Leary said.
Puck drop for Game 3 is 7 p.m. Tuesday night at the Moose Jaw Events Centre, with tickets available at www.sasktix.ca.
