Little mistakes are hurting the Moose Jaw Warriors in their first-round series with the Saskatoon Blades.

The Warriors were neck-and-neck with the Blades on Saturday night, but a few miscues ended up costing the team in Game 2 of their first-round series.

"You learn lessons as you go through each game, that's why you play a seven-game series," said Warriors head coach Tim Hunter. "As the games go along, the lessons become a little more important that you don’t have to learn too many on a nightly basis, so we learned some [in Game 1], we applied them tonight, but mistakes were made tonight, lessons we have to learn from tonight’s game to carry into our home game on Tuesday."

Despite being down 2-0 in the series after Saturday's 3-1 loss at SaskTel Centre, the Warriors feel like they're right in the series still after playing two close games in the Bridge City.

"That's what you're going to get in the playoffs, little mistakes are going to cost you the game, or even cost the series, so when we have the momentum, we've got to limit our mistakes so we can keep it and push with that," said Forward Carson Denomie, who scored the lone goal for the Warriors.

Saskatoon opened the scoring midway through the second period when the Warriors gifted them a goal. Moose Jaw's two defencemen went to change as the Blades forced a turnover, giving them a 3-on-0 which Max Gerlach finished off to make it 1-0.

Denomie scored his first WHL playoff goal just 5:07 into the third period, rifling a shot past Blades goalie Nolan Maier on the power play to tie the game.

The Blades had a good response to the Warriors' goal and eventually found the go-ahead marker when Gerlach picked up his second of the night, third of the series, on a rebound off the end boards.

Saskatoon sealed the win when Kirby Dach was awarded an empty-net goal after being taken down while skating towards the net.

"They've earned one goal in this series and that's the goal they scored to tie the game [in Game 1] by [Riley McKay]. Tonight, they get a 3-on-0 breakaway because two guys change, they get a lucky bounce off the end boards and scored and the third goal doesn't matter," said Hunter.

"The balls in their court, they're the favourite, if we go home, win our games at home, come back here for Game 5 and we’ll see how we sit."

After Brodan Salmond turned in a 35-save performance in Game 1, 18-year-old Adam Evanoff was called upon in Game 2 and made 27 saves to earn the third star on the night.

"The guys played a great game, not giving up too many rushes or high scoring chances, so they did a good job of making my job easy," said Evanoff.

He added that they're right there with the Blades, "There has been good in both games and there was bad in both games, so we've just got to take this, accept it, learn from out mistakes and move on," he said.

"We're sticking together as a team, we've learned that mistakes are costly in the playoffs, we've just got to limit those and bail each other, play for each other."

The Warriors and Blades meet for Games 3 and 4 on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, at Mosaic Place.