Moose Jaw, SK – The Moose Jaw Warriors have booked their ticket to the Eastern Conference Championship.
The Warriors knocked out the Swift Current Broncos in five games after battling their way to a 4-2 win in Game 5 on Friday at the Moose Jaw Events Centre.
“The guys deserve it,” Warriors head coach Mark O’Leary said. “They played hard, they played the right way right from our goaltender all the way out, so there’s a lot of excitement right now and anticipation for what’s next.”
After dropping the first game of the series, the Warriors won four straight over the Broncos to advance to the Eastern Conference Championship for the third time in franchise history.
Warriors forward Jagger Firkus scored a natural hat trick in the series-clinching game to lead the Warriors to the victory.
The Seattle Kraken prospect said the Warriors were focused on the task at hand going into the game.
“We knew that we’d come here to finish a job and we knew they were going to give us their best game tonight and we did a good job at the start of the game trying to drown them out with shots and put the momentum on them right from puck drop,” Firkus said.
Jackson Unger put together his second straight 30-save performance, turning away 34 shots to backstop the Warriors to the win.
“Certainly in the last two games, Jackson had his time to shine and tonight was his best game of the playoffs for sure,” O’Leary said. “We did our best to make it interesting in the third period, but he was calm, he was cool and he made some real big saves that have us in the position we’re in.”
For the fifth straight game in the series, the Broncos scored first when Josh Filmon found the back of the net just 5:32 into the game.
The Warriors got a quick response though as Firkus answered back with his seventh of the playoffs only 38 seconds later.
Just past the midway point of the first, Firkus lifted home his eighth of the playoffs to give Moose Jaw a 2-1 lead after one.
The CHL regular season scoring champ completed the hat trick with a power play goal just 5:54 into the second period, making it 3-1 after two.
With their season on the line, the Broncos cut the Warriors’ lead down to one with just over six minutes to play when Conor Geekie scored.
But his former teammate Matthew Savoie iced the game with an empty net goal for his seventh of the playoffs with 51 seconds to play, sending the Warriors into the next round to face the Saskatoon Blades.
“Throughout the regular season, playing Saskatoon, you always have an extra push, they also have an extra push playing us,” Firkus said on their third round opponent. “They’re a team that we do have a little rivalry with, we grew up with the same team, we’ve played them for the last three years, so we have to be ready, we know they’re a strong team.”
The Warriors and Blades will open the Eastern Conference Championship next Friday in Saskatoon.
Tickets for Games 3 and 4 in Moose Jaw will go on sale on Saturday morning at 10 a.m. at the Moose Jaw Events Centre Box Office and online at mjwarriors.ca.
