Series Breakdown: Moose Jaw Warriors v. Saskatoon Blades
Pic via Saskatoon Blades Twitter
By Instagram: @moosejawwarriors_history
X: @MJWarriorsFun
Oh boy was I wrong!
It feels good to be wrong too.
I predicted the Warriors would lose to the Broncos, then the Warriors steamrolled the Broncos in five games, looking like serious and legitimate championship contenders and making light work of one of my poor predictions.
The mayor, Clive Tolley, predicted the Warriors in five and he was correct.
Maybe that’s why he won the election. He just knows things about things the rest of us don’t know.
It won’t get any easier for the Warriors now though.
They’re up against the best team in WHL in the second round of the Playoffs.
The Saskatoon Blades won 50 games in the regular season; then they cruised through their first two playoff series’, eliminating Prince Albert and Red Deer, winning eight straight games.
The Warriors are in a Dawg-fight now!
It’s a classic Elite Offence vs. Elite Defence showdown.
Let’s get into a series breakdown.
Da boys: Denton Mateychuk, Brayden Yager & Jagger Firkus - pic via MJWarriors Twitter
Season Series:
If any singular factoid can be cited to guarantee a great and difficult series it is that the two team have each beaten the other three times this year.
The two clubs couldn’t be any more evenly matched than this.
Most recently, in March, they played a home-and-away series on back-to-back nights.
On the first night, in Saskatoon, the Blades beat the good guys 6-3, on two-goal performances from Alexander Suzdalev and Brandon Lisowsky.
The following night, in Moose Jaw, the Warriors flipped the script, avenging the loss with a 6-3 win of their own.
Jagger Firkus had a Hat-Trick that night. Firkus has been exceptionally great against the Blades.
In their six meetings, he has had two Hat-Tricks and contributed 15 total points.
And Firkus is hot right now, dropping another Hat-Trick in the deciding game against Swift Current.
He has 9 goals and 9 assists so far this postseason.
Denton Mateychuk is smoking hot too right now.
He has been a man possessed, with 19 points.
Lots of great things going for the Warriors but they’ve got to contend with a remarkable defensive engine with a young goaltender who has been nearly impossible to score on.
Offence:
There is no question about it; your Moose Jaw Warriors are a far more offensive force than the Saskatoon Blades.
They scored 297 times during the regular season and Jagger Firkus led the league in goals.
Only two teams outscored the Warriors while Saskatoon was ninth overall with 255.
Yegor Sidorov scored 50 goals - Via Saskatoon Blades Twitter
One guy the Warriors will need to keep in check is Trevor Wong.
Wong is a wizard at moving the puck. He led the league in assists, with 86.
Wong connects pretty well with Yegor Sidorov, a third round draft pick of the Anaheim Ducks.
Sidorov scored 50 times.
And the two of them have connected extremely well, so far, in the postseason, too.
Sidorov has ten goals and Wong has nine assists.
Brandon Lisowsky scored a bunch too, 42 of them. He’s a seventh round pick of the Maple Leafs, and he is off to a hot start too.
Fraser Minten started the season with the Maple Leafs - via Twitter
Lisowsky is not the only Leafs pick on the Blades roster either; so is Fraser Minten, who averaged over a point a game through 36 games with the team.
Minten actually started the regular season with the Maple Leafs; he played four games for them at the start of the season.
The Blades also have Alexander Suzdalev on the ice.
He only played 30 games in the regular season but in that time he had 25 points.
And, of course, Saskatoon is where Rowan Calvert, the brother of Warriors star, Atley Calvert, plays.
Two of the Legendary Moose Jaw Calvert’s, Atley & Rowan - via Twitter
It can’t go unnoticed that the Blades scored 15 goals in the final two games of the Red Deer series, so at this moment, they’re smoking hot too.
The Blades offence is pretty good. That’s undeniable.
They finished off Red Deer by scoring 15 goals in the final two games.
Red Deer allowed less goals all season than Moose Jaw. It would naive to think the Blades couldn’t also stick the Warriors with a couple lop-sided losses.
But the Warriors’ offence is far deeper.
The Warriors have massive stars in Matt Savoie, Brayden Yager, Jagger Firkus and Atley Calvert, and outside of that they also get a lot of production out of their secondary and tertiary scoring options.
The Warriors deadliest weapon against the Blades, all season, has been Jagger Firkus.
He’s scored two Hat-Tricks against them.
In their six meetings, he has totalled 15 points. The Warriors are going to want that success to continue.
Defense:
Defense is where the Blades have a massive advantage.
Saskatoon allowed the least regular season goals in the WHL, and it’s not even close.
Tanner Molendyk has been compared to a young Cale Makar - via Twitter
Led by Tanner Molendyk, a first round draft pick of the Nashville Predators, Charlie Wright, Ben Saunderson and Grady Siepmann, the Saskatoon Blades have set the Gold Standard for what excellent defense can do.
They allowed just 163 goals all season. That’s less than 2.4 a game.
The Warriors, whose defence allowed more goals than Red Deer’s, is going to need to make sure that doesn’t happen in this series.
One would be naive to think Saskatoon incapable of stick the Warriors with some lop-sided losses.
On a promising note, Saskatoon has allowed more than five goals in just three times all season.
Two of those were in losses to the Warriors.
In their most recent outing, Moose Jaw dropped six on them and back in November the Warriors lit them up for nine goals.
In both of those games Jagger Firkus scored Hat-Tricks. Jagger Firkus is an alchemical reaction to steel blades.
Big Lucas Brenton - via Twitter
The Warriors defence, led by Captain Denton Mateychuk, Kalem Parker and Lucas Brenton, is really great at moving the puck just not nearly as effective and keeping them out of their net.
This describes the battle that will make up the heart of this series.
It’s a classic Offence v. Defence showdown.
Moose Jaw has elite scoring and Saskatoon is elite at defending scorers.
Goaltending:
The difference in skill between the two clubs’ goaltending is very large.
Saskatoon’s goalies are scary-good.
They’ve got two goalies, Evan “The Gardfather” Gardner and “Stone Cold” Austin Elliott and both of them are fantastic.
Via Saskatoon Blades
Elliott was the regular starter for most of the season but the 17 year old Gardner has been nearly impenetrable in his opportunities, earning loads of game time.
Both goalies are difficult to beat but in these playoffs, the Blades have given most of the starts to Gardner, and he’s taken kindly to the extra playing time.
He is 7-0 in 8 appearances, with a save percentage of .928 and a GAA of 1.66.
Those numbers are phenomenal, especially considering Gardner is just 17.
Evan Gardner - via The Saskatoon Blades
The Warriors’ Jackson Unger was named to the All-Star team and won 35 games but his .908 (Save %) and 3.08 (GAA) pales in comparison to either of the Blades’ netminders.
In these playoffs, where the competition just gets steeper and steeper, Evan Gardner just plays better and better. Saskatoon’s gonna have something pretty for the next few years, with him net.
Unfortunately, for Gardner, he likely won’t win his first WHL championship this year.
Prediction:
I think this series works better in the Warriors’ favour than most Blades fans would want to admit.
Offensively, they’ve got the chops to score on the Blades’ formidable back-end, and defensively, they can hang in their with the best the Blades have to offer.
I predict the Warriors will win this series by controlling the puck and controlling the pace, and I think they will win it rather quickly.
Saskatoon’s goaltending is bound to win them one game for them, but I’m confident Moose Jaw will win the series handily.
Warriors in 5 (maybe 6, but definitely not 7).
Just a little perspective for anyone actually reading these: I’m wrong an awful lot.
Start planning the parade!
Warriors in 5
Here is a schedule.
