The Portland Winterhawks knew a week ago that they would get to face the top team in the WHL on Friday. They knew that it would be for the Western Conference title and they knew they would face the Kelowna Rockets.
Fast forward to this week and the players have hopped the bus for the nine hour drive to Kelowna and they will play the role of the visiting team. In an unusual twist, they will also play the role of underdog.
Five points separated the two teams, Kelowna scored 28 goals less than Portland, but also gave up 25 fewer goals. The head to head was definitely in Kelowna’s favor with four wins to none. The Rockets outscored Portland by a wide margin, but that has to be seen with an asterisk. Similar to the last series that Portland played against Victoria, the team the Royals played wasn’t the one they had faced during the regular season. With many of the top players away at times, when the Winterhawks played the Royals and Rockets, it was difficult to gauge just how tough a team Portland would have.
The trade deadline was probably the best indicator on their power as the Winterhawks rattled off a winning streak of 21 straight through February and the one blip against Seattle simply gave the Hawks another winning run through the end of the regular season. Even with all the wins, they could never catch the eventual Scotty Munro champions in the Kelowna Rockets. The Winterhawks lost just one game in the first two rounds of the playoffs with a substantial goal differential.
The Rockets had their best season ever since moving from Tacoma, Washington 18 years ago and are appearing in their first WHL Western Conference Final since 2008-09. Over the past four years, they have faced the Portland Winterhawks twice, once in the first round and then in the second round only to lose both times. In both match-ups, the Hawks were heavily favored. This series promises to be the series to watch with the top two WHL teams battling. Sadly, it won’t be for a shot at the Memorial Cup, but for many, it will be a mini version.
Portland will bring its top scorers in Oliver Bjorkstrand, Chase DeLeo and Brendan Leipsic to cause the Rockets some fits. Kelowna will counter with Ryan Olsen, defenseman Damon Severson and Madison Bowey to test Portland. The biggest question marks are top scorers for Portland, Nic Petan and Kelowna’s Myles Bell. Both have injuries, Bell was injured in the first series against Tri City and has yet to make a return to the ice. Petan was injured in game 5 of the Victoria series after being pasted into the boards with a vicious crosscheck by Brandon Magee. Petan, unlike Bell, returned to the ice for practice a few days after the Victoria series ended, though no one is sure what, if any role he can play.
Without those two in the mix, the games still favor Portland as Bell was far ahead of his teammates in scoring, while Petan shared the spotlight with a couple of his linemates. In the goaltending aspect, the Winterhawks will lead with Brendan Burke. Burke has really come into his own, having but only a half game of playoff experience from last season under his belt. He ranks third in goals against and has been the backstop the Hawks have needed when they needed it. Corbin Boes has yet to face action in the playoffs, but is ready to step in if needed. For Kelowna, it’s 20-year-old Jordon Cooke. Cooke who sat as second fiddle to Adam Brown for a couple of years, has really matured into a solid netminder and is showing that he is able to carry the heavy load when needed. Backing him up is Jackson Whistle. Relatively untested, Whistle was a netminder for Vancouver Giants before being traded as the Giants looked to a young rebuilding team and 18-year-old Whistle was deemed expendable. Whistle has been a strong backup for Kelowna, but is not expected to appear in the series.
The series promises to be extremely high tempo, supercharged speed and possibly one of the highest scoring finals in some time. The players can score in bunches and despite the netminders being at the top of their game, it is going to come down to the intangibles. Power play, penalty kill and odd man rushes will be the keys to this series. It should be in deep contrast to the very physical, brutal series that the Winterhawks had just endured.
Prediction? We’ve seen the Rockets at full strength, but they haven’t seen the Hawks at full strength. That should give the advantage to the Winterhawks, but it will be close. I’ll go 6 games with the Winterhawks finishing the series at home.
On another note with the Winterhawks, following the game 5 fiasco at the Moda Center with the Winterhawks versus Victoria, the Royals received word that they had been fined $10,000 for conduct detrimental to the league, by far the largest on ice fine in the history of the WHL. In addition, Steven Hodges was suspended for 5 games, Brandon Magee for 12 games for his crosscheck to Petan and for being a repeat offender. Both of the suspensions will carry over to the regular season if either player returns.
The Eastern Conference final has been set after Medicine Hat Tigers came back from a 3-1 deficit in the series to win the Quarterfinal 4-1 over the Kootenay Ice on Wednesday night. The Tigers won’t get any rest time as they now travel to Edmonton to face a much rested Oil Kings team on Friday in game one of the final. The Tigers lost the season series to the Oil Kings, but have tremendous momentum after this big comeback against the Kootenay Ice who were already riding an emotional high of their own in Tim Bozon being released from Saskatoon Hospital. The Tigers will give the Oil Kings a battle, but unless they completely collapse, the Tigers will fall in 5 or 6 games.
Ice Chips: Former Portland Winterhawks player and Coach Mike Williamson was relieved of duty as coach of the Calgary Hitmen. Despite leading the team to a WHL Final in his first season as Hitmen coach, the team felt they wanted a new direction after being bounced out of the WHL playoffs in the first round of this year’s playoffs. With both Saskatoon and Kamloops without coaches for next season, Williamson could be a great candidate for either team.
With the NBA playoff schedule coming out, the Winterhawks learned that should their series go to a game six, it will most likely have to be played at Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The Portland Trail Blazers game 4 is set for April 27 at the Moda Center which is also the same day as the game six date for the Winterhawks / Rockets series.
The WHL Western Conference Final is not being televised owing to an agreement with Canadian broadcaster SHAW to carry one Western series and one Eastern series. The Winterhawks versus Royals series was the Western series aired. The next series aired will be Edmonton and Medicine Hat Tigers. Should Portland make it to the next round, those games should find their way to either Comcast SportsNet or ROOT Sports.
The Memorial Cup host team, the Ontario Hockey League’s London Knights, lost in the second round to the Erie Otters and now have an almost 5 week wait until the tournament begins. For the past three seasons, the host team hasn’t made it out of the second round of the playoffs.
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