The Vancouver Warriors nearly pulled off an incredible comeback on Saturday night, erasing a six-goal deficit to tie the game in the third quarter. But every time they drew even, the Calgary Roughnecks had an answer, ultimately handing Vancouver a 15-12 loss at Rogers Arena.
Warriors’ Head Coach and General Manager said his team was resilient and showed a lot of heart, and they’re going to dig into the film to identify areas of their game they need to clean up.
“They scored goals right after we tied it, which just took away our momentum; we can’t have that happen,” Malawsky said. “We need to stack shifts; we need to stack goals, and we didn’t do that and got the result that we deserved.”
There were positive takeaways from the game, the Warriors were 1-for-1 on the power play and got 52 shots on the net. The 12 goals scored by the Warriors were also a bright spot as they average 10.22 goals per game, and most of their goals were scored at five-on-five.
Down 9-3 with 12 minutes to go in the second quarter, the forwards got to the middle of the floor which opened up scoring opportunities and they were able to capitalize.
“We moved the ball, hit our shots, that’s probably what I like the most and played free. We were plugging the middle early in the game, and then we got the middle open, and we got to the middle, we arrived to the middle with the ball, which was good.”
As the Warriors clawed their way back into the game, forward Marcus Klarich had back-to-back goals, that electrified the crowd. His first goal he went coast-to-coast, deking his defender for the finish, which he followed up with a highlight reel dunk.
Warriors’ veteran forward Riley Loewen led the charge for Vancouver, scoring a hat trick and chipping in two assists. Loewen said it takes a lot to make up the difference of a six-goal swing and that they lost a bit of their edge in the fourth quarter after they tied the game 12-12.
“It was tough to give up a lead like that, but proud of the guys for battling back and making it a good game and then we just fell a little short,” Loewen said.
While Malawsky talked about the team missing on some defensive assignments, the Roughnecks scored by committee, their top scorers for the evening were Curtis and Haiden Dickson who each scored three goals.
Loewen said the best defence is a good offence and that when other teams make a push, the Warriors’ offence needs to execute to stay in control of the game.
“We’ve got to limit the runs other teams are going on, we’re losing a lot of these one-goal games and in those games, teams are going on six-goal runs, we’ve got to try our hardest to limit those. I think a lot of it is [that] our offence has got to dig in and score at the right times to stop their momentum,” Loewen said.
“You think about the game for tonight, but then it’s move on and get ready for Vegas and try and get a big win on the road,” Loewen said.
In addition to Loewen and Klarich’s goals, Keegan Bal had eight points (2G, 6A), Adam Charalambides had six points (2G, 4A), Kevin Crowley scored a pair of goals, and Johnathan Peshko chipped in a goal.
Warriors’ goaltender Aden Walsh stopped 34 of 48 shots he faced. The 14 goals he allowed are nearly five goals more than his goals against average for the season of 9.15 GAA.
Up next for the Warriors are the Las Vegas Desert Dogs at Lee’s Family Forum on Friday, February, 14th at 7:30 p.m. PT.
