After a weekend to forget, the Moose Jaw Generals made some strides towards getting back on track last week, splitting their two games.  They won 5-2 in Wilcox last Thursday against the Notre Dame Hounds and then went up to Saskatoon on Sunday and lost a hard fought one-goal game, 3-2, to the Contacts.

The game against the Contacts could be used as a turning point for the team despite the fact that they came away with no points for their effort.  The Generals were trailing throughout the game against the league's third-best team, but battled back to almost force an extra frame.

“We just basically ran out of time at the end of the game, otherwise a few more minutes and we probably would have tied it up,” explained head coach Ray Wareham.  “Hopefully it's a message that we can push and we can be that kind of team and if we are, we're going to be tough to beat.”

One issue that Wareham has had with this year's squad has been a lack of edge to their play, but he says they showed some fight during their game against the Contacts and he's hoping that's something that can be build on going forward with the season.

“There was a scrum with Kolten Olynek and Drew Fellner in the corner at about the midway point of the second period, our guys all showed up and it was a five-on-five shoving match and after that point, I felt our guys really gained some confidence from that and started to take the physical play to them,” stated Wareham.

“We made some steps in the right direction, but unfortunately we still lost, so there's still work to be done.”

The Generals are through 19 games in their season and sit in sixth place in the Saskatchewan Midget AAA Hockey League standings with an 11-7-1-0 record.  They'll be heading into a busy home stretch over the next two weeks before the Christmas break.  The Generals host the Saskatoon Blazers and Yorkton Harvest for three games this week and then Notre Dame Hounds and Regina Pat Canadians next week before heading to Regina.  Their final game before Christmas will be a home game on December 20th against the Swift Current Legionnaires.

Wareham says the focus will be to become more aggressive when going to the net in order to get more pucks in the back of the net, “We've got to have that attitude that there's a party at the net and we've got to get there, so we passed away on some shots against the Contacts from prime scoring areas, we try one little extra pass and it doesn't happen.  Most goals are scored second, third, chances, it's not very often that you're going to score first shot goals, so that's going to be the focus here.”

The Generals will be back at practice over the next couple of days before hosting the Saskatoon Blazers on Thursday night in their return to Mosaic Place.  The Generals are 1-1 against the Blazers so far this season.