Dayna Fjord/Andy Devlin

Warriors win wild Game 7

By Matthew Gourlie

Like the villain in horror movie, the Prince Albert Raiders refused to die and that terrified the Moose Jaw Warriors.

In the end, that fear was what the Warriors needed to push them to play their best game of their best-of-seven Eastern Conference quarter-final series.

The Warriors best was good enough — barely — to beat the Raiders 5-4 in a Game 7 thriller in front of 4,702 fans at Mosaic Place in Moose Jaw.

“In Game 1 we were comfortable,” said Warriors head coach Tim Hunter. “Then we took a 3-1 lead and came home for two days and their friends are telling them how well they’re doing and we were going to finish them off in five.”

“We weren’t afraid enough. By Game 7 we were terrified. That’s what it took.”

The Raiders pushed the WHL’s regular season champions to the limit and now the Warriors will advance to face the Swift Current Broncos in the second round starting Friday.

The Broncos and Warriors had the two best records in the WHL all season, but their playoff rematch almost didn’t happen. The Raiders led twice in Game 7 and gave the Warriors all they could handle.

In many ways the series harkened back to the 2010 playoffs when the Warriors grabbed a 3-1 series lead against the top-ranked Calgary Hitmen. Calgary rallied to win in seven games and went on to win the WHL title.

“I told (Raiders head coach) Marc Habscheid in the handshake line that they made us a better team,” Hunter said.

In Hunter’s playing career he played in three Stanley Cup finals. Each time, their first best-of-seven series went the full seven games.

Hunter credited the Raiders with playing the Warriors harder than Swift Current did a year ago when the Broncos won Game 7 in Mosaic Place to end Moose Jaw’s season.

Warriors veteran Brayden Burke felt they drew on that experience from a year ago and learned a lot of valuable lessons that they can take with them into the second round.

Brayden Burke

“I think it’s good for us. We got a little battle-tested. You have to learn on the fly in the playoffs. It’s all very tough,” Burke said. “We know what it takes to get to the net. We know what it takes to score goals. You can tell in the last couple of games we started to score more goals. Everyone in the room knows what it takes in the playoffs and it’s a little different from the regular season.”

The Raiders got off to a dream start in Game 7 as Justin Nachbaur and Parker Kelly gave them a 2-0 lead after six minutes.

Jayden Halbgewachs buried a Kale Clague rebound to get Moose Jaw on the board and 25 seconds later an attempted clearance from Raiders defenceman Vojtech Budik went off of a forechecking Burke and then off of Raider Sean Montgomery and pinballed past Ian Scott in the Raiders net.

The stunning tying goal would knock the wind out of the sails of a lesser underdog. The Raiders never stopped coming for a second in any of the seven games. Before the first period was over Kelly had restored the Raiders lead with a great solo rush that saw him crash into the net and stood up after video review.

The Warriors thought they tied the game early in the second, but Ryan Peckford (who was credited with the second goal) was judged to have deflected Oleg Sosonov’s shot with a high stick.

The Warriors tied the game on the power play when Burke found Justin Almeida who roofed his shot with 1:51 left in the second.

That set up a third period for the ages. Raiders captain Curtis Miske drew a short-handed penalty shot and only managed to hit the post.

Parker Kelly

The Raiders enjoyed a two-man power play for 1:13 and didn’t manage to get a shot on goal as the Warriors killed off both penalties.

Burke found Almeida again for a power play goal in the middle of the third period to give the Warriors a 4-3 lead.

Both Almeida goals were off of his stick and into the top of the net in a hurry.

The Warriors were 4-for-22 (18.2 per cent) on the power play through six games, but finished 3-for-5 with the man advantage in Game 7. Almeida felt their power play did what they’ve been trying to do all series, but they were able to play faster which was the key.

“They played us really close,” Almeida said. “There was always a guy off your back hip and if you get half an inch or an inch you have to take it and be quick with the puck. Our team is starting to figure that out. You have to be super-quick with it and not over-think or else it creates turnovers.”

The Warriors earned a power play with 4:46 left in the third and even used two defencemen as a precaution, but Raiders defenceman Brayden Pachal — arguably the best player in the series for either team — scored a short-handed goal to stun the crowd and get the Raiders back off the mat once again.

Thirty seconds later Burke was given time to shoot and picked the corner with 3:50 left to give the Warriors a 5-4 lead. Clague picked up his fourth assist of the night on the winning goal.

“I was a little disappointed that we let the team down on the power play letting them score a PK goal when we had a lead in the last five minutes of the third. So we felt we had to go back out there and be aggressive and take our opportunity,” Burke said.

Early in his career there was a knock on Burke that he didn’t produce in the big moments. He had 109 points with Lethbridge in his breakout season, but had four points in five games and was a minus-five in their opening round playoff loss. Last year Burke had five points in seven games for the Warriors and made strides. This season he was the spark the Warriors needed. He had six goals and 14 points in the series and netted the OT winner in Game 3 and the series-winning goal Tuesday.

“I definitely see it as a learning curve,” Burke said. “My first year I put up a lot of points in the regular season, but I wasn’t committed to doing the right things in the playoffs. I didn’t do as well as I should have done. Last year I thought I started playing the right way and this year I came in knowing what it takes. I think I’ve done what’s needed to be done to put points on the board during the playoffs.”

The Prince Albert Raiders and Moose Jaw Warriors shake hands after Game 7 at Mosaic Place.

The Raiders will learn a lot from their return to the post-season. The Raiders have a strong core of eight 1999-born players that should make them one of the East Division favourites at the start of next season.

Habscheid called the series a building block for the future, but also said one of the great things about his group was that they wouldn’t take any solace in coming close to a great upset.

“The great thing about this group is that they don’t want to hear about effort. They don’t want to hear about close. It’s all about winning. And we lost the series and they’re disappointed,” Habscheid said.

“There are a bunch of winners in that room, guys that care about one another. It’s a close group that played structured, played hard and played together. When you do that you’re going to give yourself a chance. (Moose Jaw) won the regular season and we could be moving on just as easily as them. But such is sports and such is life.”

The Raiders lost Games 2 and 3 in overtime and then lost Game 4 when their third-period tying goal was disallowed. None of that phased the underdogs who won Game 5 in convincing fashion and forced a Game 7 on Easter Sunday with a gritty win.

“Our guys battled and never quit and that’s what it is to be a Raider,” Habscheid said. “It’s difficult. There are a lot of tears in there now. It doesn’t matter if we were 40-point underdogs. It doesn’t matter. We still lost. Being close isn’t great. We’re not here to be close. I thought for a lot of the series we were the better team, but they ended up winning it.”

“Congratulations to them, but we’re proud of our guys. We felt it could have even not gone seven. It didn’t seem like we got a lot of bounces or breaks in this series.”