By any measure, the Moose Jaw Warriors had a successful run through the Western Hockey League regular season.
With 40 wins on their ledger for the first time since the 2018-19 campaign, the Warriors floated around the top four in the Eastern Conference right from the first puck drop, and if not for some well-documented late-season adversity, might have found themselves looking at an even higher finish.
As it stands, fourth place, a 41-24-0-3 record and home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs against the Lethbridge Hurricanes is a nice consolation prize -- and one the Warriors aim to make the most of when the puck drops in Game 1 on Friday night at the Moose Jaw Events Centre.
“We’re really excited for the playoffs,” said Warriors captain Denton Mateychuk. “We’ve been getting ready for this the last couple months and looking forward to it all year, so we’re going to go out there and show what we can do.”
There was a time not that long ago where just making the playoffs was a cause for excitement, especially after a couple of lean years as the team retooled, Now, it’s all about winning games in the playoffs and doing all they can to take a run at the Eastern Conference crown.
“We’re built to win here, that’s what we want to do, that’s what all the guys are thinking in the room,” Mateychuk said.”We made it here, now it’s time to show everyone why we made it here.”
The Hurricanes aren’t about to roll over, of course. They finished only seven points back of the Warriors in the standings and have had success against Moose Jaw this season, and it was with that in mind that the team ramped up the intensity in practice over the last week.
“It’s been really good,” Mateychuk said. “There have been a lot of little details that we’ve been working on throughout the week. They’re a hard-working team, they use low-to-high quite a bit, so we’ll try and take that away in our D zone and in the offensive zone. That’s the big thing they’ve used against us and what’s worked against us in the past, so that’s something we have to be aware of out there.”
The important thing will be to get off to a good start and make the most of home-ice advantage to keep the pressure on Lethbridge throughout the series.
“You always want to get ahead early, you don’t want to fall behind in the series, so we’re going to do what we can to keep that from happening,” Mateychuk said. “We’re a resilient group, we have the tools to be able to come back if we do fall behind, but we want to make sure we get up early and don’t leave anything to chance.”
Game 2 of the series is on Saturday night at the Moose Jaw Events Centre, with puck drop at 7 p.m.
