It was win or go home on Tuesday night for the Moose Jaw Warriors, as they needed a win against the Drummondville Voltigeurs to advance to the Memorial Cup semifinals.
And it would be a promising start for the Warriors.
A nice play at 13:04 of the first period that involved some tic-tac-toe passing from Lynden Lakovic to Atley Calvert to Vojtech Port, resulted in a 1-0 lead for Moose Jaw.
In the second period at the 5:10 mark, on the man advantage, Moose Jaw’s Brayden Yager would find Jagger Firkus for a one-timer goal.
Then Denton Mateychuk would make it 3-0 Warriors at 12:43 of the second by corralling a loose puck in front and putting it home.
But the Voltigeurs were not going away.
At the 14:46 mark, Luke Woodworth would find Justin Cote on a cross-ice feed to make it 3-1.
Then at 15:43 Peter Repcik would beat Jackson Unger from the left faceoff dot.
And at 3:13 of the third period, Alexis Gendron would complete the comeback going high glove on Unger.
It looked like the game was destined for overtime until at the 18:26 mark, a shorthanded snipe by Aiden Ziprick would put the Warriors up for good.
Brayden Yager would seal the game by scoring an empty netter with just ten seconds to go.
With the win the Warriors advance to Friday’s semifinal, where they will play the loser of Wednesday’s game between the Saginaw Spirit and London Knights.