Key games as Blades face east rivals
It was back to business Tuesday for the Saskatoon Blades following a 10-day, five-game road swing through British Columbia.
After a quick turnaround, it’s suddenly crunch time for the Blades, who are about to take on a number of Western Hockey League East Division opponents.
Saskatoon — which sports a 17-9-3-0 record, good enough for second spot in the East Division behind the Prince Albert Raiders — has back-to-back games Friday and Saturday against the surging Moose Jaw Warriors, who are only three points behind the Blades despite playing four fewer games.
The Blades then take on the redhot Prince Albert Raiders, who are 26-1-0 this season and riding a 19game winning streak.
Saskatoon also has two games against the Brandon Wheat Kings, who trail the Blades by five points, but have three games in hand.
“Really important games,” Blades head coach Mitch Love stressed Tuesday. “I mean, six games in nine days and five of those are against divisional opponents against teams that are above us, or near us, in the East Division standings. They’re very important hockey games. That’s kind of been the motivation here for getting ourselves prepared for those matchups and we’re really excited. We haven’t had a lot of games against the East Division.”
The message isn’t lost on Blades captain Chase Wouters.
“We haven’t played many of our East Division teams so it’s really important, the next 12 days as a group, with six games in nine days starting Friday, for us to start off on a good foot against Moose Jaw,” Wouters said of the busy stretch before the holiday season.
The Blades were 3-1-1-0 through B.C., where they blew leads in a couple of losses to the Vancouver Giants and Kamloops Blazers, but still managed to come out with seven of a possible 10 points.
“We’re OK with that,” said Love. “We had a lead in the Vancouver game; we had a lead in the Kamloops game and we were only able to come out with one of those four possible points. As a coach, you evaluate yourself on that a little bit, but to go on a .700 winning percentage on a road trip like that, especially with five games in eight days, we’ll take it. Now, we’re back at home with some tough divisional opponents, so we’ve got to be ready for that.”
“I thought we played some good hockey throughout the road trip,” added Wouters. “We took a period off in Vancouver and it ended up costing us that game, but I thought, overall, we played really well as a team and as a group. We definitely came more together as a team.”
While the Blades have established themselves as road warriors with an 11-5-2 record, they are 6-4-1 at home and would like to improve on that.
“I think just simplifying our game (is key),” suggested Love. “The tendency at home is to kind of try and sit around and try and do things of the cute nature instead of really simplifying and playing the clock, where we’re at in the game. I think our team game is starting to come around a little bit better, a little more structure in our team game. Hopefully that will translate onto home ice. We don’t spend a ton of time on whether our home record is better than our road record. It’s just a game-by-game evaluation.”
Wouters said the Blades need to treat home ice like a road game.
“When teams come to the rink and maybe push us around a little bit, we need to stand up for ourselves and play a full 60 minutes to get some more home wins,” said Wouters.