The Moose Jaw Warriors skated to a 4-0 Game 1 win over the Kootenay Ice Friday, but the only four that matters to the Warriors is still three wins away.
Stealing home ice? Winning Game 1 on the road? The Warriors have been there and done that in their last two playoff trips. It didn’t result in a first round series victory.
As impressive as Friday’s Game 1 win was, that was the message from Warriors head coach Dave Hunchak — it’s only one game.
“We’ve let it go and we need to start preparing for Game 2,” said Hunchak. “We came here with the idea of trying to get a split. We’ve done that.
“We’ve accomplished what we wanted to accomplish and now we have the opportunity to kind of knock them down a little bit. When you get opportunities like this at playoff time you have to try to capitalize on them.”
Game 2 of the best-of-seven Eastern Conference quarter-final series is tonight in Kootenay.
The Warriors came out of the gate flying and took the game to the Ice early.
It didn’t take them long to make it count.
Warriors rookie Andrew Johnson opened the scoring 3:17 into the first period. Less than four minutes later, Quinton Howden ripped a shot past Nathan Lieuwen in the Ice goal. A minute later Howden scored a short-handed goal to give the Warriors a 3-0 lead.
“We were very nervous, that sometimes happens,” Kootenay head coach Kris Knoblauch told the Cranbrook Daily Townsman. “Maybe because we’re the favourites to win it, just because we start at home, the boys were nervous to start the game. We had an unfortunate bounce for the first goal and guys got even tighter after that.”
The Warriors were out-shot 13-4 in the second period, but scored the only goal as Jesse Paradis scored on a breakaway after Ice defenceman John Neibrandt fell down at his own blue line.
Thomas Heemskerk made 30 saves in the Warriors net to earn his first career WHL shutout.
