It wasn’t officially his first Western Hockey League goal, but it was huge one nonetheless.
Moose Jaw Warriors rookie Brayden Yager scored on the final shot of the shootout to give the Warriors a 2-1 victory over the Prince Albert Raiders in WHL East Division action in the Brandt Centre bubble in Regina on Sunday night.
Daemon Hunt scored the Warriors’ lone goal of regulation early in the third period.
While it wasn’t the more offensive affair from their season opener against Brandon, the win once again featured a Warriors team that isn’t going to go away easily.
“The first two periods I don’t think we got to our game, but I think the heart and the resiliency came in the third period,” head coach Mark O’Leary said. “We got to playing back to what we showed in the first game and that’s attacking pucks to get it back and then run downhill and connect with five guys.
“I thought it was a really good third period, we had four lines going and it was a lot of fun. We were climbing above the puck and were on the right side of the puck with that relentless attack, and that’s how we need to play.”
The Raiders had a golden chance to score early in the game when only three minutes into the contest the Warriors found themselves killing off a 5-on-3 penalty kill for more than a minute and a half.
The Warriors would hold Prince Albert to only a few shots, though, marking the second straight game they’d killed off an early two-man disadvantage.
Overall, it wasn’t quite the start Moose Jaw had put together in their opening game, where they carried play from the first faceoff. This time around, it took more than 10 minutes for Warriors to get their first shot on Raiders goaltender Carter Serhyenko.
Kaiden Guhle opened scoring in the contest with nine minutes gone in the second, with his shot from right face-off dot finding its way through traffic and behind Boston Bilous.
That would be the only blemish on Bilous’ record on the night, though, as he turned in another stellar performance with his 26-save showing.
Boston Bilous turns aside a shot against the Prince Albert Raiders. | Keith Hershmiller“Honestly, I don’t want to talk about my performance too much because we’ve changed a lot as a team and these last two games have been amazing for the team,” Bilous said. “The guys are battling, there are a lot of blocked shots that people don’t get credit for. It makes my job a lot easier and these past two games have been really fun.”
Warriors’ captain Hunt was the beneficiary of some hard work in the corner by Atley Calvert on their lone goal 3:52 into the third, taking the feed wide open just inside the blueline and blasting a shot past Serhyenko blocker side.
That would be the final goal of regulation, and the two teams would head into overtime.
Cade Hayes, Tate Popple and Hunt all had chances alone in on Serhyenko in overtime but were unable to finish things off as the Warriors outshot the Raiders 5-2 in the extra frame.
Korczak scored the other goal for Moose Jaw in the shootout before Yager rifled his shot off the crossbar and in on the final shot.
“I think he definitely took a step tonight, the more the game went on the more comfortable he got,” O’Leary said of the 15-year-old’s showing. “I think it’s more the sign of a really good player when they seem to get more comfortable the tighter the game is and the bigger the moment. You saw it in overtime with a real good look, so when we got to the shootout there was no hesitation… we knew he was going to be in the top three to go, it set up nice for him and it’s a really nice moment for Brayden.”
Serhyenko turned aside 24 shots for Prince Albert.
The Warriors are back in action Tuesday night when they take on the Regina Pats. Game time is 8 p.m., and even though the Brandt Centre will be empty the contest will still be an occasion.
“No fans doesn’t really change the fact it’s Moose Jaw - Regina, I know I get a little more excited when it’s Regina,” O’Leary said. “They’re obviously going to be a hungry team with a couple of tough losses, so we’ll be looking forward to the challenge after a hard practice Monday and we’ll be ready to go.”
