The Hitmen held off a furious first-period push by the Warriors and would eventually go on to a 4-2 victory after winning 7-3 in their previous meeting on Oct. 18 in Calgary.
“We didn’t have a very good game the last time we played Calgary, we weren’t very good defensively,” said Warriors head coach Tim Hunter. “We played much better in Lethbridge and were able to build off that. We worked on a lot of things in practice to implement in our game and I thought we played very well tonight.”
One visiting player with an exceptional amount of interest in the game was Calgary defenceman Jett Woo, who played the first three seasons of his WHL career with the Tribe and was drafted by the Vancouver Canucks while playing with the team.
He would finish the contest with assists on the first two Hitmen goals.
“I think for the most part it feels better to get the win,” Woo said. “Getting a couple of points here is pretty special, too, but our whole team played pretty well, our goalie stood on his head and it was a big win for us.”
While heading to Mosaic Place through the visitor’s entrance and residing in the visitors dressing room was admittedly strange for the 19-year-old rearguard, it was a regular hockey game once the puck dropped.
“It’s funny, the only time I’ve been in there was during training camp before main camp,” Woo said with a grin. “It was definitely different… obviously I have a lot of buddies over there and hopefully it was just as memorable for them as it was for me.”
The contest also featured a milestone for a member of the Warriors, as defenceman Braden Miller scored his first WHL goal at the 11:37 mark of the second period, taking a cross-ice feed from Tate Popple and rifling a shot from the slot over Hitmen goaltender Brayden Peters’ blocker.
“It was just a great heads up play by Pops, he was able to find the middle of the ice and I was able to get a quick shot off and it went in,” Miller said. “I was pretty excited about it, it’s the first of many I hope and I’ll keep going from there.”
The Warriors rookie now has four points through his first 11 WHL games.
“I’ve just been trying to work on the little things and working on building my confidence every game, keep getting better,” Miller said. “It’s all a process and starting from training camp to now I feel like I’ve improved a lot.”
Riley Stotts and Josh Prokop scored power play goals two minutes apart late in the first period to give Calgary a 2-0 lead out of a frame dominated by the Warriors – the shots sat at 10-2 for the Tribe at one point in the period before finishing 11-7.
Miller scored the only goal in the second period before Calgary’s Jonas Peterek and the Warriors’ Owen Hardy exchanged markers in the third. Carson Focht added an empty net goal with 1:22 to play.
Bailey Brkin turned aside 22 shots in the Warriors goal, Peters would finish with 20 stops on the night.
The loss was the Warriors sixth in a row and now sees them holding a 5-6-1-0 record. Calgary improved to 7-2-1-0
“That’s a team that’s older than us, they’re built for a long playoff run and we’re a rebuilding team and we played with them all night,” Hunter said. “So there were lots of good things, lots to build off, good coachable moments to move forward and play Saskatoon on Sunday.”
The Warriors take on the Blades in an afternoon tilt beginning at 3 p.m. at SaskTel Centre.
Overtime… the Warriors announced Friday that Kaeden and Keenan Taphorn are no longer with the hockey club and have been suspended by the team and the WHL. While under suspension they are ineligible to play at any level.
