Don’t look now, but the Moose Jaw Warriors suddenly find themselves on a bit of a roll.
The local club picked up their fourth-straight win on Friday night with a 4-1 victory over the Everett Silvertips in Western Hockey League action at the Moose Jaw Events Centre.
The win saw the Warriors improve to 8-4-0-0 on the season and move three points clear of Regina for fourth place in the Eastern Conference.
More importantly, it’s a continued confidence boost for a team that came into the season looking to put together an impressive campaign.
“It’s awesome,” said Warriors forward Jagger Firkus of the team’s current run of success. “There are a lot of expectations on the team from the start of the season and we didn’t get off to the best start, but we’re starting to get into our groove right now and I’m looking forward to the next stretch we have here. There are going to be lots of teams who are coming and wanting to knock us off and I’m looking forward to the challenge, for sure.”
Firkus played a big part in the Warriors’ success Friday, as he scored a pair of breakaway goals to give Moose Jaw a 2-1 lead early in the second period.
The first came with 38 seconds remaining in the first frame, and it was a bit of a lucky one.
Cole Jordan sprung Firkus on a break from the Warriors’ blueline, and while Everett goaltender Braden Holt made the initial save, defenceman Olen Zellweger crashed into his netminder while chasing the play and pushed the puck into the net.
The goal came at a good time, too, as Everett had carried the play five-on-five much of the period, with the Warriors generating their pressure on a pair of power plays.
Jackson Berezowski tied the game for Everett 2:53 into the second period, but 38 seconds later, Firkus went in on his second jailbreak and this time made no mistake, putting home a shot glove side to restore the one-goal Warrior lead.
“On plays where you see their d-man is in the corner, you can cheat a little bit, to be honest with you,” Firkus explained. “It’s just finding time and space, I try to go to the open areas and I did that tonight and got two lucky plays.”
Nathan Pilling then extended the lead to a pair with 2:05 remaining in the frame, taking a pass out of the corner from Lucas Brenton and getting off a one-timer that snuck past Holt into the far corner.
That the Warriors went into the third with a two-goal lead was once again the product of a solid goaltending performance from Connor Ungar. In what’s rapidly becoming a broken record, Ungar made a handful of big saves to keep the Silvertips off the scoreboard despite outshooting Moose Jaw 21-8 in the frame.
Neither team would be able to score in the third period until Brayden Yager finished things off with an empty netter with five seconds to play.
Ungar finished the game with 46 saves on the night, while Holt turned aside 27.
Needless to say, the Warriors are in a positive frame of mind at the moment and will look to keep things rolling when the second U.S. Division team in as many nights visits the Moose Jaw Events Centre on Saturday night. Game time against the Tri-City Americans is 7 p.m. at the Moose Jaw Events Centre.
“It’s upbeat in [in the room] right now and everyone is super happy,” Firkus said. “It’s not like it wasn’t that way at the start of the season, but now everyone is playing good games and it’s even better in practices right now… it’s just a lot of fun when you’re winning games.”
