Alex Grieve made sure the Westside Warriors didn't fall behind 2-0 in their opening round BCHL playoff series with the Trail Smoke Eaters.
After admittedly his worst effort of the season in game one Friday, the Warriors captain scored twice and got under the skin of the Smokies all night long in a 4-2 victory Saturday, evening the best-of-seven series 1-1.
Grieve and leading goal scorer Grayson Downing seemed to be the odd men out early as the Warriors went with just 11 forwards due to injury.
Once they were able to work their way into the rotation, they found the game that was lacking the previous night.
“Definitely it was (a message), it you're not going you're not going,” says Grieve.
“It doesn't matter if you've played in this league for three years or you're a rookie. It's playoff time so the guys that are working are going to be going.”
The Warriors jumped all over Trail early, staking themselves to a 2-0 lead before the game was five minutes old.
Rookie Travis Blanleil took out a Trail defenceman behind the net, stole the puck and threw it out in front where Tyler Krause banged home his first of the post season just 2:25 into the contest.
Two minutes later, Grieve deftly deflected a point shot from Matt Cronin past Kiefer Smiley for a 2-0 lead.
Kyle Singleton increased the lead to 3-0 31 seconds into the second when he corralled a loose puck in the slot and backhanded a shot through the five-hole.
Sam Mellor got one of those pack on a Smokies power-play before Grieve roofed a wrist shot from the top of the slot to restore the three goal lead.
It didn't take long for the bad blood to seep into the contest.
Late in the second period, Quinn Gould took an errant hit to the face and didn't return the rest of the night.
Then, as the second period buzzer sounded, Smokies defenceman Jake Baker hit Max French high at centre ice sparking a lengthy tussle between the two teams that threatened to erupt into something more than pushing and shoving.
The two coaches began jawing from the bench and both goaltenders even had to be separated by the officials.
“If they are going to play a brawl street style then our guys will stand up to it,” says Warriors head coach Darren Yopyk.
“I thought the referee did a great job of keeping things under control as well and that's what veteran referees do. We want to play hockey here and I think you've seen us play long enough — shenanigans aren't really part of our style.”
He says the Warriors are big enough and strong enough that they'll stand up to whatever is dished out.
“We'll do whatever it takes to win.”
Yopyk says he was pleased with the effort displayed by his squad after Friday's disappointing effort.
“They worked real hard, especially in the first two periods. We got down a lot of guys in the third and hung on but we did what we needed to do and tied the series up.?
The Warriors were down to just eight forwards for a long stretch of the third period. Brett McKinnon, Stefan Nicholishen and Brett Mulcahy all sat out with injuries while Singleton missed the first part of the third, Gould left with the facial injury and Shawn Hochhausen sat out a 10 minute misconduct.
With seven defencemen dressed, Matt Cronin took a turn on the forward line on occasion to spell the forwards.
Yopyk says he won't know until Monday the severity of Gould's injury.
As a precaution, the Warriors have signed TJ Fairall who played Jr. B in Golden this season.
The series now shifts to Trail for games three and four Monday and Tuesday.
Game five goes Thursday back at Royal LePage Place.
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