For all the talk of how well the Moose Jaw Warriors have been playing defensively in the 2023 Western Hockey League playoffs, it’s been easy to overlook just how impressive things have been going at the other end of the ice.
The Warriors have found a way to score goals in almost all situations and at all times of the game throughout the postseason, regardless of the situation or score.
That’s led to impressive comebacks and big leads, with the Warriors seeing a bit of both in Game 3 on Wednesday night against the Winnipeg Ice.
Winnipeg scored the first two goals of the game at the Moose Jaw Events Centre, but the Warriors would battle back to tie things up before the period was out and would go on to an 8-4 victory to take the lead in the series.
“Any time you score eight goals, you hope you win, and we were flying tonight,” said Warriors forward Brayden Yager, who finished the night with four assists. “All our lines were playing fast and sticking to the plan, and that’s what happens when you have a whole team pulling in the same direction. I was super excited with how we played tonight and we’ll try to build off this for tomorrow’s game.”
To say the least, the Warriors’ top line has been going.
Firkus leads the team in scoring and is third overall in the WHL with seven goals and 15 points in seven games, while Yager is right behind with five goals and 14 points in that same span, and they’re joined by Martin Rysavy with four goals and eight points.
“I try not to pay too much attention to that, but I have a couple of great linemates and we’re just going to try and keep doing what we’ve been doing since it’s been working as of late,” Yager said. “We’ve kind of found our game, so we’ll stick to that and see what happens.”
A big part of how things turned out in Game 3 was how the Warriors seemed to have an answer for anything Winnipeg threw at them -- especially in the third period, where the Ice were the definitively better team in the first two games of the series.
“I think any time they’ve had a good pushback, it’s kind of been on ourselves,” Yager said. “We kind of give them a bit of life, whether it’s a penalty or defensive zone errors, but I think we cleaned up our d-zone at the end of the game and did what we could not to give them any life. I thought we did a really good job of that tonight.”
The Warriors have also seen more and more secondary scoring in the playoffs, with Lynden Lakovic playing that role on Tuesday night. The 16-year-old forward scored a pair of goals and had numerous other good looks throughout the night.
“I wasn’t producing a lot in the regular season, but it’s going a lot better in the playoffs and it definitely feels good to score two against the number one ranked team in Canada,” Lakovic said. “I feel if I stick to the gameplan, the production will come, and it worked out well tonight.”
Seeing the entire line-up chip in at different points through the playoffs has been a positive, and something that Lakovic hopes will continue the rest of the series.
You can’t have your top guys play their best every single night, and for our bottom six to go out there and play like that is definitely helping,” he said. “If we keep on playing like this and everyone is contributing, we’ll be fine.’
One thing that for certain is that things aren’t going to get any easier as the series progresses. The Warriors are plenty wary of what Winnipeg is capable of bringing any night, but remain confident they can get things done -- especially with the support of the Moose Jaw faithful.
“The crowd was pretty electric tonight and we definitely used that momentum, we were feeding off that a lot and it showed out there,” Lakovic said. “Hopefully it’s just as good a crowd (Wednesday) and we have just as good a game.”
Puck drop for Game 4 is 7 p.m. at the Moose Jaw Events Centre.
