It's been a long wait for the Moose Jaw Warriors to see game action after their opening weekend split against the Regina Pats.

The Tribe will finally return to the ice on Saturday night when they host the Calgary Hitmen at Mosaic Place.

The Warriors have spent their time fine tuning areas of their game that they feel were lacking against Regina and that will need to be tightened up before facing a strong Hitmen team.

“It's been a good chance for us to get some more systems going, also a refresher for new guys, it's been good, we've been working hard and we're really looking forward to the game,” said Ryan Gardiner.

“We're all confident right now, we've been working hard and it just comes down to game day and taking what we've learned in practice and bringing it to the game.”

The 18-year-old defenceman added that protecting their net is going to be the biggest key for them against Calgary.

“They like to crash the net a lot, so we need to box out early, the forwards need to back check and come hard back to the house and overall we just need to out compete them,” said Gardiner.

Compete has been key word for the Warriors throughout the week as head coach Tim Hunter said on Wednesday that's where he felt the team needed to improve the most coming out of the opening weekend.

The Warriors faced the Hitmen during the preseason at the rookie tournament in Regina and it was a physical affair between the two teams. Gardiner said they're not thinking about that game too much heading into Saturday.

“It was a chippy game, but in the end it's hockey and how it was, but if they want to get chippy with us, we'll give it right back to them and we'll just out compete them,” he said.

Moose Jaw and Calgary will face off on Saturday night at 7:00pm. You can tune into Western Nissan Warriors Hockey on Country 100 for all the action, starting with the Pre-Game Show at 6:40pm.