For three seasons, Brody Willms entered the season as the back-up to Zach Sawchenko. Waiting for his chance to shine.

Now, heading into this 19-year-old season, Willms has his opportunity and will have one of the best teams in Moose Jaw Warriors’ franchise history in front of him to boot.

Sawchenko left the Warriors following last season to join the University of Alberta Golden Bears after four seasons of stellar play between the pipes in Moose Jaw.

In his back-up role, Willms has shown signs of his ability to take on a bigger role, progressively posting better numbers with each passing season and now with his chance here, he’s ready to take his game to the next level.

“It’s a big opportunity that I’ve been looking forward to,” said Willms. “Going into the summer, I knew it was going to be a big summer for myself to get ready for the season, so I took that mindset into it and really prepared off the ice and on the ice before coming to camp.”

In 25 appearances last season, Willms posted a career-high 12 wins with career-best numbers in goals against average at 3.11 and save percentage at 0.907.

With a bigger role this season comes some added pressure to perform. There’s also the fact that the Warriors are projected to be one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference this season.

Willms said he’s up to the challenge heading into the season.

“I have a lot of confidence in myself and having three prior seasons of experience in the league coming into this year, really helps, so I have the confidence and I’m looking forward to being the starter for this team,” said Willms.

Willms looked calm in the net as he made 27 saves for the Warriors in a 2-1 shootout loss to the Brandon Wheat Kings on Saturday night in the preseason finale. It was the first game action of the exhibition schedule for Willms, who was nursing an injury throughout camp.

“It’s more maturity than anything,” said Warriors head coach Tim Hunter. “Whether he was going to be the number one or number two goalie, maturity gives you that calmness and playing time and better coaching will change all that as well.

“He’s really worked hard. I thought he played really well (on Saturday night), he was a little rusty in the first 5-7 minutes or so and then he settled in and made some very routine saves.”

There’s a big difference in the two styles from Sawchenko to Willms. Sawchenko was a goalie that relied on his athleticism to make dramatic saves, while Willms is much more technically sound goalie that uses his six-foot-two frame.

That being said, Willms isn’t a stranger to making those out-of-nowhere saves, which he showed during the Warriors’ preseason finale when he pulled a puck back off the goal line for a huge first period save.

Heading into this season, Willms said he focused on working on a few parts of his game to get ready for the year.

“I worked a lot on tracking pucks, getting my head down into following the puck in for saves, so that’s a big step that my game has taken,” said Willms.

With a lot of big expectations for the Warriors’ team this year that can bring some added pressure. Add into that being a first-time starting goalie, that can bring even more pressure, but that’s not the case for Willms, who’s not looking too far ahead.

“We’re just going to play our game and control what we can control, go out there and work hard and have some fun while doing it,” said Willms. “I don’t think there’s too much pressure to do anything too big, we know what we can do and we’re going to handle that.”

After a summer of anticipation, training camp and the preseason, Willms said he’s ready to get the season going.

“Anytime the regular season starts up, it’s exciting to get back into it, the preseason is over and we’re getting into the real stuff now, so we’re all looking forward to it,” said Willms.

“Everybody in the room is real excited about what our team can do this year and we’re going to have some fun with it and it’s going to be a big opportunity this year.”

The Warriors will open the 2017-18 regular season on Friday night in Prince Albert. They will host the Raiders the next night at Mosaic Place.