Last season, the Moose Jaw Warriors ran the table through the U.S. Division, winning all six games on their late season road trip.
Now, the Warriors will be looking to play spoiler against the Everett Silvertips, who have won six straight, including all four on their East Division road trip so far, coming into Friday’s showdown at the Hangar.
“They’ve obviously had a lot of success and a big part of it is their structure,” Warriors head coach Mark O’Leary said. “They do a real good job inside home plate in their own zone, they don’t run around, they make you come to them and they can create turnovers if you’re not smart with the puck.”
This is the only meet of the season between the two teams, who put together a thrilling back-and-forth game in Everett last season with the Warriors prevailing 8-7 in a shootout.
Warriors forward Brayden Yager said Moose Jaw will need to start strong against the Silvertips.
“They’re kind of hot right now, so the biggest thing is just to come out hot and take their life away right away,” he said. “We need to play a full 60 minutes and not let our foot off the gas.”
The Warriors are coming off a split of their two-game road trip to Alberta last weekend, which saw the squad finish up with a 6-3 win in Medicine Hat on Saturday night.
Yager said the team got a spark from Noah Degenstein and Deegan Kinniburgh scoring late in the first period against the Tigers.
“We saw some of our depth lines come and contribute, so that was really good to see and got us fired up and brought some energy back to the bench and we took the game to them from there,” he said.
The Silvertips are currently being led in scoring by two defencemen with Tarin Smith sitting at 12 points and exceptional status rookie Landon DuPont with four goals and 11 points in seven games.
O’Leary said Everett’s back end will present a challenge for the Warriors.
“That’s a big part of their team, their top-four D are as good as any team in the league, both offensively and defensively,” he said. “But there’s things we can do to help ourselves there and it starts with our forecheck, make it hard on them, they have skill to contribute offensively, but it’s hard to do that if you’re constantly going back for pucks.”
The Warriors will look to slow down the Silvertips on Friday night at the Hangar. Tickets are available online here and at the Moose Jaw Events Centre Box Office.
If you can’t make it to the game, tune in on CHL TV and Country 100. The Pre-Game Show on IKS Media Warriors Live starts at 6:45 p.m. on Facebook and YouTube.