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Moose Jaw Warriors

Warriors Veteran Schuurman Highlights Team Depth After Back-To-Back Game-Winning Goals

May 26, 2024 - Western Hockey League (WHL)
Moose Jaw Warriors News Release


Saginaw, Mich.- If you had to guess which Moose Jaw Warriors player acquired in a trade in 2023-24 would end up icing the championship, it'd be easy to bet on the guy who began the season with the NHL's Buffalo Sabres.

While Matthew Savoie ended up having an indelible impact on Moose Jaw's impressive postseason run, it was an unexpected hero who stepped up late in the Championship Series to seal the first WHL title in Warriors franchise history.

Brayden Schuurman, come on down.

The 20-year-old centreman from Abbotsford, B.C. came to the Friendly City with Minnesota Wild prospect Kalem Parker in a sizeable swap with the Victoria Royals in early October.

At the time, Warriors General Manager Jason Ripplinger touted the veteran as a hard worker with an affinity for draws and an ability to find the back of the net.

Playing much of the season with another midseason acquisition, Rilen Kovacevic, Schuurman hit the 20-goal plateau for the second time in his WHL career and added another 27 helpers with 47 points in 62 games in a third-line role.

While he was brought in as a steady veteran presence, he hadn't ever played a WHL postseason game before.

"The energy, the importance of every game, I think it's just cranked up a notch," Schuurman said of his introduction to the WHL Playoffs. "The guys that have no playoff experience, you look to some of the guys that do to kind of bring you along and then you kind of do your thing."

Schuurman's thing, it turns out, plays right into Head Coach Mark O'Leary's creed of empowering players to believe they could be the ones to make the big play, no matter their role.

The 5-foot-9, 197-pound forward scored one of the biggest goals of his career in Game 3 of the WHL Championship Series, batting a puck out of the air and into Portland's net in overtime to bring the raucous crowd at the Moose Jaw Events Centre to its feet.

"Oh, that goal," Schuurman grinned. "That was a great moment for me and for our team. We put ourselves in a great position there in Game 3 going to overtime. A couple of nice plays by my linemates and I batted one out of the air and kind of went blank after that, hearing the hangar erupt.

It's a big time in a series. I mean, the series is either 2-1 and they've got a little groove, maybe they're feeling good, they're going to play well and they come back and all of sudden maybe we're going back to Portland. That was a big turning point in the series for sure."

Schuurman put an exclamation point on his performance the following night.

With Game 4 tied 2-2 with less than six minutes left in regulation time, Schuurman received a pass from Kovacevic, picked his spot, and wristed the Championship-winning-goal home.

"As a kid, you have big moments kind of throughout your career, whether that's a little spring Hockey Tournament when you're 12 years old or in a Bantam championship, I think each moment you dream of scoring the next biggest goal, the next biggest moment," Schuurman explained. "I think for me, coming into the Western League knowing that it was going to be a playoff run with Moose Jaw, I wanted to be that guy to be able to step up for my team."

As O'Leary pointed out, those kinds of moments are what the playoffs are all about.

Ahead of Moose Jaw's match against the OHL Champion London Knights at the 2024 Memorial Cup, the Warriors bench boss took a chance to shine a light on the depth forward's achievements.

"He enjoys the challenge of tough matchups," O'Leary told reporters. "A lot of the work that he does for us goes unnoticed because a lot of it is without the puck or kind of in the shadows, but I just love times like that where he can score that big goal and get recognized for things that we see each and every day."

Schuurman and his teammates have a chance to make history again as they chase Moose Jaw's first-ever win in a Memorial Cup match when they face London on Monday, May 27 at 5:30 p.m. MST.

All games will air on TSN 1/5, RDS, NHL Network (USA only) and CHL TV.

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