For all intents and purposes, it should have been a rather quick and simple playoff season for the Moose Jaw Warriors in the Hockey Regina U11 A division.
When you finish in sixth place with an 8-9-5 record and all the teams ahead of you in the standings were well into double digits in wins, it stands to reason you might get a victory or two, but things would eventually come to an end.
Thing is, someone must have forgotten to tell the Warriors about all of that.
The local squad strung together five straight wins over the last month, finishing off their impressive run with a 4-2 victory over the Regina Tigers on Mar. 23 to claim the Hockey Regina title.
Braxton Casemore, Carter Taylor, Troy Maltais and Mason Dodd scored for Moose Jaw in the title game, while Trip Kuntz was the winning goaltender.
The Warriors opened their playoff run back on Mar. 9 with a 2-1 win over the 11-seed Regina Royals before picking up the first upset of their run on Mar. 11 when they took a 5-3 win over the Regina Shamrocks, who had finished in third place in the regular season.
Moose Jaw received their first break in the draw when the seventh-place Regina Cougars upset second-place Lumsden in the ‘A’ side quarter-final, making the Warriors the favourites heading into the contest. They’d live up to it, battling to a 4-3 win on Mar. 12.
That set the stage for the ‘A’ final against the fifth-place Prairie Storm Lightning, with Moose Jaw enjoying the most comfortable win over their run with a 6-2 victory.
That put the Warriors in the driver’s seat with the ‘B’ side champion Tigers needing a pair of wins to claim the title, but eventual champs would leave nothing to chance with a Game 1 win.
