The Moose Jaw Warriors close out 2017 with a showdown against another top team in the Western Hockey League.

The Warriors and Brandon Wheat Kings will duke it out in a pair of games this weekend, starting on Saturday afternoon in Brandon and ending on New Year’s Eve in Moose Jaw.

Both teams enter the game playing some of the best hockey in the WHL with eight wins a piece in their last ten games.

The Warriors are coming off a split of their two games back from the Christmas break, losing 5-4 in a shootout in Swift Current before beating the Broncos, 8-2, at Mosaic Place on Thursday.

“We were very happy to bounce back with a win and to win by that margin, it was awesome and a good confidence boost for the guys,” said defenceman Josh Brook, who returned to the ice on Wednesday and Thursday after missing two games just before Christmas.

The two games against the Broncos were actually the first two games this season in which the Warriors have had Brook and fellow rearguard Jett Woo in the lineup at the same time.

“That was the first couple times that we’ve had our whole d-core together, we showed that we were pretty comfortable back there,” said Brook. “There was one period in Swift that we weren’t happy with, but other than we were all happy with our game.”

In their return from the break, the Warriors have been able to dominate the second place Broncos for five of the six regulation periods that they’ve played. Now heading into the match-up with the third place Wheat Kings, Brook said that they want to keep that roll going.

“We just need to play our game, bang bodies and make plays,” he said. “We were firing on all cylinders, we were hard on the fore-check, the defence is getting it up to the forwards quick and they’re making plays and scoring.”

The Warriors won their only meeting so far this season with the Wheat Kings, beating them 7-4 at Mosaic Place in their final game before the Christmas break.

The two sides will meet on Saturday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. in Brandon. The Pre-Game Show will be on the air at 2:10 p.m. on Country 100. The Warriors will then host the Wheat Kings on Sunday night at Mosaic Place, puck drops at 7 p.m.