When the Moose Jaw AAA Warriors were able to largely avoid the ongoing pandemic as it surged through the Saskatchewan Male AAA Hockey League back in January, little did they know it would have a serious effect on the team in the future.
While other teams found game after game postponed, the Warriors just kept on playing. And eventually, that meant hitting the end of their schedule back on Feb. 21.
In the meantime, other teams in the SMAAAHL had as many as six contests left on their docket. Which meant a long, long layoff before the Warriors would take the ice for another game.
In the middle of last week, after eight days off, Moose Jaw finally found out their playoff opponent: the Regina Pat Canadians.
From there, it was yet another week and a half of waiting for the opening game of the post-season, which will take place on Friday, Mar. 11 as the Warriors travel to Regina to kick off their best-of-five opening round.
“We went pretty hard here in practice all week and starting Sunday we’ll be back to preparing for Regina,” said Warriors head coach Trevor Weisgerber, who gave his charges a week off after their regular-season finale, an 8-1 win over Tisdale. “So we're looking forward to it. The guys are ready to go and hopefully we can get some guys back from injuries and we'll be ready to go right away in Regina.”
Needless to say, having 17 days off between games is less than ideal. But in a season where league organizers have done all they can to get around the pandemic and play a full slate of games, it is what it is.
“I guess we'll just chalk it up to nothing being normal these days,” Weisgerber said. “It's where we're at and we'll just deal with that. We’ll be as healthy as we can be, we'll be nice and rested, so it should be good.”
The Warriors could have finished anywhere from fourth to seventh in the league standings depending on how things shook out with wins and losses for the rest of the campaign.
In the end, they only dropped a single spot and ended up fifth with a 26-17-0-1 record. The Pat Canadians used their five games in hand to catch Moose Jaw for fourth and are now 26-11-0-6 with one game left to play.
As one would expect from two teams only five points apart in the standings, there wasn’t a lot of difference between the two clubs when they faced one another.
Moose Jaw won three of the four meetings, including a 4-3 shootout win at Mosaic Place on Oct. 2 followed by a 2-0 win at home on Dec. 3 and a 4-2 win in Regina on Jan. 6. Regina’s lone win over the Warriors came on Nov. 4, a 7-0 victory in Regina.
The key now will be to get hot at the right time -- something the AAAs know all about, having finished fourth in the 2019-20 campaign before eventually reaching the league final.
“We ended up having a pretty good run there and that shows what can happen,” Weisgerber said. “So we're just trying to get as prepared as we can here and, we're going to take one game at a time and look to get off to a good start on Friday.”
The series resumes in Moose Jaw on Monday, Mar. 14, with puck drop for Game 2 at 8 p.m. at Mosaic Place. Game 3 goes Thursday. Mar. 17 in Regina, followed by Game 4 back in Moose Jaw on Sunday, Mar. 20 at 7 p.m. and the deciding Game 5 on Wednesday, Mar. 23 in Regina.
For the latest scores from the SMAAAHL, visit www.smaaahl.com.
