It wasn’t the prettiest of wins, but the Saskatoon Blades downed the Swift Current Broncos 3-1 Saturday to complete a sweep of three games-in-three days to open their W-H-L pre-season schedule.

“For some of these kids, (playing three games-in-three days) is a rarity. They probably haven’t had that since Pee Wee in a tournament out in their home town,” said Blades’ head coach Mitch Love. “It tests not just your physical aspect, but your mental aspect…and I think that was a bit of a challenge for our guys and, hopefully, something we can learn off of.”

The Bridge City Bunch never trailed, getting goals from Josh Paterson (pictured), Eric Florchuk and Emil Malysjev. The latter tally came on the Blue and Gold’s seventh power play chance…and after the man-advantage squad surrendered the Broncos’ only goal late in the second period to Ethan Regnier.

“The guys battled hard and they found a way,” said Love about the victory. “I think there’s a lot to improve on in a game like this. I thought we were a little better defensively than we’d been the first (two games), but offensively I didn’t really like our game, which is weird because we had (37) shots…but I think we could’ve had 60.”

Malysjev’s goal came in his second game since arriving in Saskatoon from Sweden late Tuesday night.

“Every practice and every game, I gain a little bit more confidence,” explained the 17-year-old, 6’3″ defenceman. “It’s going to be better.”

The Blades out-shot the Broncos 37-21 with 16-year-old Koen MacInnes winning for the second time in net. Saskatoon is off until Thursday when they make their second of three pre-season visits to Prince Albert.