While some teams in the provincial U18 AAA Male Hockey League have decided to use this pause to rest and get back at it in the new year, the Moose Jaw Warriors’ players are back at practice – in a modified way that’s still allowed by the province - for the foreseeable future.

The U18 AAA Warriors have been split into three cohorts of mini-teams that will are practicing several times per week.

“We’ve got two groups that will skate a day… they’ll go 40 minutes, and the next group will go on for 40 minutes, and the third group is at the gym,” said Weisgerber. Then those groups switch for the next practice day.

"Nothing is ideal but I guess this is the way we’ll kind of do things for the next three weeks.”

Weisgerber explained why it's important for the team to skate together as safely as possible.

“If we were to let these guys just go home, who knows if they can skate, and it’s a lot tougher,” he said. “At least we’ll be able to skate until they’re done school on the 18th, and then they’ll have a couple of weeks of holidays over Christmas, which will be nice and then hopefully we can get started right back at ‘er in the new year.”

The annual Macs Midget Tournament in Calgary was cancelled a while ago, and just over in Manitoba, their hockey association cancelled all of their provincial championships for 2021.

The Warriors had a 4-2 record in the regular season when the province paused all competitions until Dec. 17. It was disappointing for the Warriors to pause their season when they did, after a pair of losses to the Regina Pat Canadians.

“Obviously, it’s not ideal,” Weisgerber said. “We’d like to be playing, and the guys want to play, and that’s what it’s about. It makes it tough, but we look at the bright side here. We can work on some things and we’re going to do a bunch of skill work. I think in the long run it’ll be ok, but it’s nice to play games.”