Westlock’s Senior ‘AA’ Warriors begin their inaugural North Central Hockey League playoff run away from the home crowd, but fought to an impressive 6-4 in Morinville on Feb. 1.
The third-place Warriors face the second-place Kings in the first game of the best-of-three NCHL playoff series, and last Saturday’s road comeback victory gives Westlock a chance to end the series at home on Feb. 8 — game time at the Spirit Centre is 8:30 p.m.
Beating the Kings on their home turf made for a bit of an upset; the Warriors had struggled against Morinville for much of the year, coming up short in their last two regular season matches.
Nonetheless, coach Joe Kuhar said he wasn’t at all surprised by the win.
“We felt that the previous two games in regular season, those were games that we should have won, but we just lost by the one goal,” he said.
“We just had a more complete game (Saturday) and that made the difference.”
Things started out tough for the Warriors, who faced an early deficit and ended the first period trailing 1-0.
It turned around a bit in the second period, though, with the Warriors taking the lead thanks in part to the Kings racking up some penalty minutes.
“We kept ourselves disciplined and didn’t cause any penalties, while they did,” Kuhar said.
“They got themselves into some penalty troubles and we were able to capitalize.”
The Warriors gained the upper hand by the end of the second period, leading 3-2, and kept the momentum up for the remainder of the game.
“It gave us a lift then they were coming from behind us, and that just frustrated them,” he said.
Coming back to Westlock this Saturday night is a big opportunity to finish the series on home ice — something that would be a real treat for the hometown crowd.
“It’s going to be huge. I think that should give us an advantage for sure,” he said.
“Having that home town atmosphere, in front of the fans, I think that’s just going to give us a lift and I’m pretty confident we should be able to take them at home and finish the series.”
Kuhar said he also expects to have a more complete lineup, with a few of the guys who were unable to play last Saturday beefing up the Warriors’ bench.
If the Warriors can pull out a win this Saturday, they’ll face off against either the first-place Devon Barons or the fourth-place Slave Lake Winterhawks. Devon currently leads the series 1-0.
“We’d rather like to see ourselves play Slave Lake, but we’ll play whoever,” Kuhar said.
“But we’re not really focused on that at this point. We just want to finish off the series at home then we’ll worry about the next game after that.”
