Third period rally disappoints, Warriors lose pre-season decision to Regina

MOOSEJAWTODAY.COM — The Moose Jaw Warriors are desperate to get the first period back after their Western Hockey League season opener against the Regina Pats on Wednesday night.

Or, more specifically, 31 seconds from the first period.

Regina scored three goals from 8:24 to 8:55 of the opening period and would go on to a 7-4 victory as the Warriors opened their exhibition campaign in Estevan. It was the second game of the preseason for the Pats, who lost 8-5 to Swift Current on Wednesday.

Despite the loss, Warriors head coach Mark O’Leary was mostly concerned about the progress of his troops, and that was evident even during the game.

“It’s about taking steps as we go along, whether it’s day-to-day or period-to-period,” he said in postgame comments to the Warriors’ Marc Smith. “We want to be better today than we were yesterday and better tomorrow than we were today. That’s been the whole game, I thought we were better in the second period than we were the first and our best period was the third period.”
Both teams had a lineup made up of rookies, with the Warriors having eight first-year players and the Pats having seven.

Jaxsin Vaughn opened the scoring for the Pats at 8:24 of the game, followed by Corbin Vaughn 15 seconds later and Cole Tempe 16 seconds after that goal.

The Warriors got going again not long after, with Connor Schmidt scoring their first goal with 12:32 remaining before Max Finley made it 0-0 1:25 into the second period.

Regina regained control of the game shortly after with goals from Temple, Logan Peskett and Sam Oremba to take a 6-2 lead in the second period.

Ethan Hughes and Owen Berge then scored for the Warriors in the third period, with Hughes finishing the game with a goal and two points.

“It took a while to get used to our first game in a short time, but I thought we did well in some areas,” Hughes said. “We didn’t do well in the D-zone at the beginning of the game, but we got better… I felt progress as the game went on and we’ll come back tomorrow and be better.”

Zane Rowan scored with 32 seconds left in the game.

Dimitri Fortin started in goal for the Warriors and stopped 29 shots, while Madden Mulawka scored 28 times for Regina.

The two teams will be back on the ice Saturday night with another neutral site match, this time at the sold out Southland Co-op Centre in Assiniboia. The game will kick off at 7:00 p.m.