After the way things went for the Moose Jaw Warriors against the Saginaw Spirit in their Memorial Cup opener on Friday, the Western Hockey League champions were looking for a much better outing in their second game of the tournament.
That’s exactly what they got against the London Knights, as they gave the OHL champs an impressive push before eventually falling 5-4 at the tournament in Saginaw, Mich.
Thing is, even with a better game, a loss is a loss. And as a result, the Warriors will be in a must win situation when they take on the Drummondville Voltigeurs on Tuesday night.
“When you’re playing against good hockey teams like these, your margin for error is real low,” said Warriors head coach Mark O’Leary. “There was a lot to like about tonight’s game. Individually there are some guys who I felt had really good games and as a team there were more good moments than bad. I thought for the most part it was a good game, we just didn’t cash in on the opportunities that they did.”
The contest was a lot more balanced from start to finish compared to the Warriors’ previous outing, which saw the Moose Jaw get off to an awful start before rallying to making things interesting late.
The difference this time around was as O’Leary mentioned: London being able to finish off opportunities while the Warriors left a few more on the table than they would of liked.
“They’re disciplined in their structure and they cause some turnovers in tough areas, then they have the skill to back it up,” he said of the Knights’ style. “You give them opportunities in the zone and around the net and they’re going to make you pay, and that’s what we saw tonight. They don’t need a whole lot of opportunities to cash in.”
Seeng a better start — specifically, not giving their opponent a 4-0 lead — was a major positive, especially knowing what they were going to face from an extremely skilled team.
“We did some real good things early on, we were playing with energy, enthusiasm and structure and we had opportunities that we left on the table early on in the game that came back to haunt us,” O’Leary said.
“You’re doing something right if you’re getting those opportunities. So tomorrow it’s a matter of learning from what worked, and what worked tonight will work against Drummondville so we just have to replicate the good stuff.”
Now, it’s a situation the Warriors have been in before in the 2024 playoffs: win or your season comes to an end. Seeing as Moose Jaw is still playing hockey, it’s not too hard to figure out how things went in those previous games.
“There’s no group I trust more to come up with their best game tomorrow,” O’Leary said. “It’s a do-or-die situation, if you win, you’re in, and that’s a pretty good spot to be… we’re going to get their best game, we just have to make sure they get ours.”
Puck drop against the Voltigeurs on Thursday is 5:30 p.m. on TSN.
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