AAA Warriors roll to pre-season win over Legionnaires

Four-goal second period leads to 6- 0 victory in exhibition opener

If every game for the Moose Jaw Warriors in the new Saskatchewan Midget AAA Hockey League season goes as well as it did on Saturday afternoon, the local squad could be in for a good campaign. The Warriors scored four goals in the second period and outshot the Swift Current Legionnaires 29- 4 in the process on their way to a 6-0 victory at Mosaic Place. “It was a good game, they had a young team out there and we did too,” said Warriors head coach Trevor Weisgerber of the match-up. “We kind of got the kinks out in the first period and in the second we played hard. It was good to get that under our belts.”

The opening frame – the first period of the pre-season for the new-look mini-Tribe – saw the two teams emerge scoreless, with the Legionnaires coming out on top on the shot clock.

That all changed dramatically midway through the second. The Warriors simply took over the game, hemming Swift Current in their zone for extended periods of time and peppering goaltender Vincent Pinsonneault with shots. The Legionnaires netminder was up to the task for the majority of the onslaught, giving up a power-play goal to Ethan Peters with 5:22 gone in the frame, but the Warriors would eventually wear the entire defence down and score three goals in the final 4:02 of the period.

Lucius Schmidt, Evan Callaghan and Connor McGrath all netted markers to put the Warriors up 4-0 heading into the final frame.

“A lot of it was just taking away time and space,” Weisgerber said. “We were talking about it in the first week that we want to be a tough team to play against, we want to be taking away time and space all over the ice. It generates turnovers and I think that’s more or less what happened. We had a lot of turnovers and we capitalized on that.”

Austin Reschny and Atley Calvert each had single markers in the third. Dylan Ernst went the distance in goal, turning aside 21 shots to earn the shutout. The contest was called with just over a minute remaining due to a half-hour power outage at Mosaic Place.

The two teams were back in action Sunday in Swift Current, with Kirk Millen scoring the game-winning goal four minutes into the third period as the Warriors took a 3-2 victory.

Calvert and McGrath scored Moose Jaw’s other goals, Chase Coward made 29 saves. The Warriors are back in action Saturday, Sept. 14 when they take on the Notre Dame Hounds in Wilcox.