Keith Hershmiller
East Division, Game Recap, Insight

Feist, Pats edge Warriors in thrilling ‘Trans-Canada Clash’

Written by Jamie Neugebauer on

 

Layton Feist scored twice, including the overtime winner, as the Regina Pats (4-4-2) edged the Moose Jaw Warriors (4-5-1) 3-2 Tuesday night in the second ‘Trans-Canada Clash’ of the campaign.

Eric Alarie led the way for Moose Jaw with a goal and assist, while Connor Bedard’s magnificent rookie campaign continued with another two-point night and a spot atop the Western Hockey League point leaders with 19 through only 10 contests.

Although it was the Warriors’ fifth defeat in a row, head coach Mark O’Leary remained steadfast in his belief that the club was headed in the right direction post-game.

“I know it’s frustrating when the puck is not going in,” he said, “but credit to our guys, we just stuck with the plan.

“We did not get the result we wanted obviously, but we just want to put ourselves in a position at the end of the game that we have a chance to win it. We certainly had the puck on our stick in pretty good spots to win it, so the process is there, and we just have to trust that eventually, we’ll get the result we’re looking for.”

The Pats fired the first warning shot across the Warriors’ bow with seven minutes remaining in a frantic opening period when rookie Braxton Whitehead took advantage of the fact that Daemon Hunt had fallen behind the play to find some open space in the Moose Jaw zone, and pinged a rocket off the crossbar behind goaltender Brett Mirwald.

A scoreless first period saw Mirwald emerge as the best Warrior by a distance, withstanding three straight power-plays against, and a barrage of shots fired from a Regina club energized from its nine-goal explosion a night previous vs. the Swift Current Broncos.

“As a team, we’re really confident in Brett right now for sure,” O’Leary said after the 17-year-old’s 32-save performance.

“He’s done a real good job here. Whether he is starting or not, and just jumps right in and does his job. I think early on, we didn’t have the best of starts and had to kill a couple of penalties, he was our best player. I talked (to the team) about sticking to our game plan and until the offence comes, that’s when you need your goaltender, and Brett was certainly that for us tonight.”

Moose Jaw’s best chance of the first half of the energetic-yet-cagey clash came at the nine-minute mark of the middle frame as Atley Calvert sauced a feed to Brad Ginnell on a two-on-one, but the veteran failed to hit the target in alone on Roddy Ross.

The first goal finally arrived with 9:25 left in the second as a defenceman-to-defenceman pass between two Warriors bounced off the intended receiver’s skate, and dribbled to the absolute wrong man if you are rooting for Moose Jaw: one Mr. Bedard.

Regina’s ‘boy wonder’ made absolutely no mistake with about an hour in alone on Mirwald, flipping a deft backhand high blocker side for his eighth of the year.

Mirwald kept the Warriors within one moments later when Pats captain Logan Nijhoff found Zack Smith back door on a two-on-one, but the rookie netminder snapped the shot destined for the top corner out of midair with a quick glove.

He did it again with four minutes left in the second period when Carter Massier tore in on a shorthanded breakaway, opened the young goaltender up, and tried to slip it five-hole; but the rookie goaltender was able to brilliantly close his pads just in time.

A great start to the third for Moose Jaw was rewarded two minutes in when the most fitting member of the Warriors to respond to Bedard’s marker found the back of the net. Eric Alarie worked a puck below the Regina net, flipped it out in front to Brayden Yager and Moose Jaw’s own 2005-birth year carved out enough space to blast the puck over Ross from in tight.

“It was a good play by (Riley Krane) to start it,” Yager said post-game.

“He cycled it down low, I saw (Alarie) go around the net – he was calling it the whole way, saying he was passing it. I just found some open ice, he put it on the tape, and it ended up going in.”

Despite all the talk in the media and elsewhere Yager, Moose Jaw’s third overall pick in the 2020 WHL draft, two spots after Bedard, refuses to admit there’s anything different about a game against the man who went No. 1.

“It’s just another game,” Yager urges.

“It’s in the back of the mind obviously, but he’s just a great player. His creativity is off the charts, he’s someone I look up to, but for me, it’s just another game.”

Alarie put Moose Jaw up briefly at 11:32 of the final stanza, chipping home from in tight for his team-leading seventh of the year after a strong individual effort from Logan Doust to get the puck on net, but a point shot from Layton Feist evaded Mirwald just over a minute later to tie it.

And yet again in the Regina Hub edition of the ‘Trans-Canada Clash’, off to overtime we went.

Both teams had all sorts of chances in a riveting extra frame, but it was a relatively innocuous one that won it.

Mere moments after Warriors’ youngster Jagger Firkus was in alone and stopped by Ross, the Pats went back the other way, and it was another rookie, Regina’s Feist, whose long wrister fooled Mirwald low-glove side with 27 seconds remaining in overtime, that ended up the winner.

It was Moose Jaw’s first loss of the season in extra time after they had gone 3-0 all on overtime or shootout victories to start the campaign.

“It’s frustrating that we’re a little snake-bitten right now,” said Yager.

“I think we just have to keep working and the bounces will come. Right now we’re getting the opportunities, but we’re just not finishing, and I think as we go along that will come.”

The Warriors will have the chance to snap their skid Thursday afternoon when they take on the Swift Current Broncos, puck drops at 4:00 p.m.