The Moose Jaw Warriors will be looking to forget about what happened Friday night as quickly as possible.
To an extent.
After dropping a 9-1 decision to the Brandon Wheat Kings in the final road game of their Western Hockey League preseason campaign, it was a matter of quickly refocussing for the rematch back home 24 hours later -- while also picking up a few lessons along the way.
“Process is definitely the most important thing,” Warriors assistant coach Curtis Pereverzoff on mjwarriors.ca. “The outcome is never fun to see a performance like that, but at the end of the day, we need guys playing the right way and making sure that they’re doing their jobs and paying attention to the details.”
As the score would indicate, it didn’t take long for the tone of the game to be set.
Brandon’s Easton Odut, Dominik Petr and Jaxon Jacobson made it 3-0 in the first period while outshooting the Warriors 14-5 in the process.
Caleb Hadland made it 4-0 Wheat Kings before Samuel Borschwa got the Warriors on the board, scoring their lone goal of the evening at the 6:42 mark. Patrik Kral drew the lone assist.
Odut got that one back just over a minute later to make it 5-1.
The third period was all Brandon, as they’d outshoot the Warriors 16-4 and get goals from Jacobson, Rylen Roersma, Roger McQueen and Tre Fouquette to finish off their offensive onslaught.
Dmitri Fortin got the start and allowed four goals on 24 shots in 29:02 before Josh Banini finished things off, giving up five goals on 22 shots in 30:58.
Nicholas Jones went the distance for Brandon and stopped 22 shots.
Now for the caveat.
The Warriors were missing no less than five players as captain Denton Mateychuk (Columbus), forward Jagger Firkus (Seattle), forward Atley Calvert (Pittsburgh), forward Brayden Yager (Pittsburgh) and defenceman Lucas Brenton were all in National Hockey League rookie camps, while Brandon had a trio of players missing in goaltender Carson Bjarnason along with fowards Nate Danielson and Brett Hyland.
The two teams are right back in action Saturday night as the Warriors close out the preseason on home ice. Game time is 7 p.m. at the Moose Jaw Events Centre.
