And you better believe that this one stung even more than their 10-2 loss in Winnipeg this past Wednesday.
The Ice scored four goals in the final 9:01 of the game -- including the game winner with 45 seconds to play -- to steal a 5-4 victory out of Mosaic Place.
It was as tough a loss as the team has endured in recent outings, and one that was especially difficult to stomach given how the Warriors were able to carry play for the vast majority of the game.
“For two and a half periods we won our fair share of one-on-one battles and the last 10 minutes we lost loose puck battles inside of home plate and board battles,” said Warriors head coach Mark O’Leary in giving his assessment of the late-game collapse. “We had defenceman going back for pucks in the corner and getting knocked off pucks and wingers on the wall not getting pucks out and they ended up coming up with those opportunities...
I think we matched them in a lot of areas but when it really counted, when it really got hard, we lost the one-on-one battles.”
The Warriors got off to a much better start in the contest -- not giving up a goal in the opening 14 seconds made that automatic -- and they were rewarded with the game’s first marker.
Ryder Korczak picked up right where he left off after his solid showing in Winnipeg on Wednesday, finding himself all alone in the slot and firing a shot home high blocker side on Ice starter Gage Alexander.
The Warriors then capped off a string of sustained pressure in the Winnipeg zone with their second goal of the game with 1:05 to play in the first. Robert Baco did the honours after Cade Hayes nearly slipped a shot home five hole, with Baco jumping on the loose puck in the crease and poking it home.
Brayden Yager then extended the Warriors’ lead to 3-0 6:21 into the second, taking a feed from Jagger Firkus on a three-on-one after vehemently calling for the puck and ripping a shot over Alexander’s glove.
Winnipeg got one back before the second period was out. Carson Lambos took advantage of the first power play of the game to get off a shot that just snuck past a screened Carl Tetachuk with 6:42 remaining.
The Warriors then killed off three straight penalties before scoring their fourth goal, and it was a beauty -- Eric Alarie chipped the puck up the boards and slipped past the pinching defenceman, setting up a two-on-one with Yager. The 16-year-old make no mistake, blasting a shot home to restore Moose Jaw’s three goal lead.
It looked like the Warriors had all the momentum at that point, but it was the end of the good news on the night for the home team.
“I loved our response, we’re playing a team that just beat us 10-2 and we still played them pretty well for the majority of the game,” O’Leary said. “If we play this game against other teams, with this kind of effort for the first 50 minutes, we’ll like the outcome more often than not. These are tough learning experiences, that’s for sure, and we all have to share them.”
Matt Savoie pulled the Ice within two with 9:01 to play, and Winnipeg took advantage of their fifth-straight power play to get back within one on Savoie’s second of the game with 6:55 remaining.
The Ice never let up from there, and on their way to outshooting the Warriors 20-7 in the final frame, completed their comeback.
Nolan Orzeck tied the game with 6:57on the clock, finding a loose puck at the side of the net and putting a quick shot home, and Connor McClennon finished things off when Tetachuk got tangled up with a defenceman at the side of the net, allowing McClennon to simply dump the puck into the open side of the net with 45 seconds left in the game..
“I like to believe that you can fix it and learn from it, it takes time,” O’Leary said of the end result. “I never question our effort, that’s always there, but learning the difference between effort and true compete when it’s just you and another guy doing whatever you need to do to come up with the puck, I think that’s hard for some to understand. We’ll try and take a step in that direction every week.”
Tetachuk turned aside 47 shots on the night, while Alexander faced 27 of his own.
Hayes, Alarie and Firkus all had two assists each while Mikey Milne had three helpers for Winnipeg.
The Ice also enjoyed an extremely rare occurrence in Western Hockey League contests, as they didn’t take a single penalty that wasn’t coincidental, and Moose Jaw didn’t have a power play opportunity. Winnipeg finished the game 2-for-5 with the man advantage.
The Warriors are back on the ice Wednesday when they travel to Saskatoon, with next home action on Oct. 29 when they host the Medicine Hat Tigers. Game time is 7 p.m. at Mosaic Place.