The Moose Jaw Winmar Warriors took a period to get their legs under them, but once they got things going in their Sask Male AAA Hockey League pre-season opener, the goals added up quickly.
The Warriors scored five in less than 10 minutes to open the second period and would go on to a 6-2 victory over the Swift Current Legionnaires in the exhibition season opener for both teams at the Moose Jaw Events Centre.
Seeing that result was most certainly a positive for head coach Trevor Weisgerber, especially in the first game of the season and with so many unknowns.
“We’ve worked on stuff in practice and now we just want to put it into game situations, and we were able to do a bit of that,” he said. “I felt early on that we were on our heels and we took quite a few penalties, so we got to work on our PK, which was good.
“There were a lot of good things, there were some guys who played really well and a lot of it is just adapting. We have a young team here and we need to get these three games in so they can get accustomed to things and then it starts for real.”
The Legionnaires took a 1-0 lead out of the first period, but by the time the second frame hit the 11:01 mark, the game was pretty much in hand for the Warriors.
Keaton Lesperance got things going at 2:58, followed by Charlie Nameth at 3:05, Ryan Gibbs 54 seconds later and Lesperance with his second goal 41 seconds after that marker before Carson Deichert wrapped up the flurry at 11:01.
“A couple of them were just going to the net and getting tipped in, then a couple were banged in on rebounds and there were a couple of nice ones,” Weisgerber said. “So it was a bit of a mixture and that’s good, when you’re scoring all ways that’s what you want.”
Fox got one back for Swift Current before the period was out, and Moose Jaw’s Dylan Duzan scored the only goal in the third period.
Luke McKechnie got the start in goal for the Warriors and stopped 33 shots, the Warriors had 32 shots on the Legionnaires’ Jacob Morris.
Deichert, Duzan and Gibbs all had two points, while Cooper Buhay contributed a pair of assists.
The Warriors currently have three players -- Caleb Potter (Seattle), Joel Pinel (Kelowna) and Max Threinen (Prince George) -- still in Western Hockey League camps, a situation that is similar for nearly every team in the league. Another group will be off to the Sask First camp this weekend, meaning getting a guage of where they stand is difficult at this point.
“It’s really hard to say, especially with so many guys gone right now,” Weisgerber said. “We’ll have to see, guys are all over the place and you don’t know who’s coming back, that’s kind of the way it works in this league. So guys will be in certain situations here and we’ll see how they do and how they can adjust. It’ll be good for everyone to get into those situations.”
On a whole, Wiesgerber expects to have a younger team this season, with solid goaltending and a skilled defensive corps playing a major role in their success.
“We’re definitely pretty young, but our goaltending is looking strong with Bainer (Ryan Bain) back and McKechnie played very well tonight, he was good in his junior games (in Yorkton) and he had a good season last year, so our tandem is looking good,” he said.
“On our backend, we have a couple guys gone, but the young guys we’ve brought in skate very well, they move pucks and they played very well tonight. So I think from our goalies to our back end and all the way out up front, I think we’ll score by committee and we’ll see how things work out.”
The biggest goal at the moment is getting off to a great start to the season and ensuring they’re in the top four in the league standings when the Circle K Classic (formerly Mac’s Midget AAA) tournament cutoff hits in early November.
“We’ve already talked about the start of our season and how key it is to have that good start,” Weisgerber said. “It begins in practice and in the exhibition games here we want to work on stuff and get the kinks out, because in the past we haven’t had the best of starts. So we want to make sure we’re really focussed on how we start and that we’re ready to go and give ourselves a chance this year.”
The Winmar Warriors are right back in action on Friday night when they host the Regina Pat Canadians, with puck drop at 7:15 at the Moose Jaw Events Centre.
