Warriors' Mateychuk expecting tough series in Winnipeg

Moose Jaw Warriors defenceman Denton Mateychuk is proud to hail from Dominion City, Man. — population: 350.

The number of people who are actually in the small community may drop a few percentage points for a few hours on Friday and Saturday, when the Warriors visit the Winnipeg Ice in WHL playoff action.

Several members of Mateychuk's family are planning to make the 92-kilometre northward drive to Winnipeg for the first two games of a bestof-seven Eastern Conference semifinal.

“It'll be pretty cool to see my family there,” the East Division's defenceman of the year said as Game 1 against the league-leading Ice loomed.

“We know Winnipeg's a good team, but we're not going to change our game plan. We're going to go into it with the mindset that we're going to win the series, so we're pretty excited and it's definitely going to be a good one.”

Moose Jaw is coming off a first-round series against the Saskatoon Blades, who were eliminated in five games. Mateychuk was the Warriors' leading scorer during the series, with one goal and seven assists.

We're going to go into it with the mindset that we're going to win the series.

“I think I had a good series,” he said. “I watched a lot of video on Saskatoon and tried to see what I could do to help my team in lots of situations.

“I just tried to bring what I brought into the regular season into that series and evolve my game and do what I do to the best of my abilities. I think I did a good job of that and I'm going to try to bring that into the Winnipeg series as well.”

Winnipeg, which had a 53-10-3-2 regular-season record, ousted the Prince Albert Raiders (28-35-4-1) in five games. Moose Jaw (37-244-3) dominated Saskatoon (38-26-3-1) even though the teams finished just one point apart during the regular season.

Having edged Saskatoon by one point in the standings, the Warriors are now poised to face an opponent that it trailed by 30 points. Winnipeg was 5-1-0-1 against Moose Jaw during the regular season.

“They're a really strong team,” Mateychuk said. “We've played them quite a few times this year. We've had some success, but we've also had some big losses to them.

“I think we've learned from what we've done against them and from when we've had those big losses.”