The Moose Jaw Warriors showed that they're right there with the Saskatoon Blades in a home-and-home battle between the two sides over the weekend.

The Warriors skated to a 3-2 win in Saskatoon on Friday night and then dropped a 5-3 game at Mosaic Place on Saturday.

"They're a team that’s been building since I've been here, five years, and now they're finally a contender, finally they look like they're a team that can make the players and nobody was counting us in that group, but we're going to be a team that's going to contend to make the playoffs as well," said Warriors head coach Tim Hunter. "We've still got work to do, but we're going to get a lot better as a team."

The Warriors finished the weekend sitting four points back of the Blades for second place in the East Division, however, Moose Jaw has four games in hand and will have five games in hand by the Christmas break.

Both games in the home-and-home were tightly contested and showed that there isn't much separating the two teams.

A three-minute lapse in the second period during Saturday's game cost the Warriors.

"We had our older guys out there when it happened and we didn't bounce back well enough from it and it cost us the game," said Warriors captain Josh Brook.

"We've got to [compete] at the start, in the middle and at the end, it can't just always be at the end all the time, it's not always going to work, in the second half it gets way harder and we can't have those slip-ups happening."

With the way the team has progressed this season, Hunter said he's confident that the Warriors will learn from their mistakes this weekend and grow.

"Moving forward, I told the team in the new year, it's going to start getting harder and we can't let teams have that much momentum in a game where they score four straight goals," said Hunter. "It's a learning experience, our guys battled and I'm pretty proud of the position we're in and how hard they've worked to get to this position so far."

The Warriors sit at 16-7-4-1 this season. They will close out the first half of the WHL season with a home-and-home against the Regina Pats this weekend.