At the start of each season, all the various sportswriters, fans and those that think they know about hockey, look at last season to this season and make their predictions on how the teams will fare, even into the playoffs. For the past four seasons, the Portland Winterhawks have stymied many who thought that they would just fall apart due to their incredible losses of talent to graduation, professional leagues and age maximums. Each year it’s looked upon as “cycling” with teams rebuilding after a big run to the playoffs and having a rough couple of years before they start to gel, make another run and repeat the process all over again.
One thing that binds all the past four seasons together is that the Portland Winterhawks made the Western Hockey League Finals in each of those years. That is a record held by only four teams. The Flin Flon (Manitoba) Bombers started it in 1967 – 1970, the original incarnation of the Edmonton Oil Kings from 1971-1974 before they moved to Portland to become the Winterhawks, the 1975-1978 New Westminster Bruins and you can now add the Portland Winterhawks to that list.
The Winterhawks, however, have been able to avoid the “cycling” by developing talent, finding talent and making stars almost appear out of nowhere. Four years back, it was Nino Niederreiter and Ryan Johnasen that would be the start of the improved Winterhawks, then it went to Sven Baertschi, Joe Morrow and then Seth Jones and now you can add Derrick Pouliot, Taylor Leier and probably Brenden Leipsic to the mix. In each of those seasons, the Hawks were thought to be out of contention the following year. That seemed to offer more motivation as the Hawks kept finding nuggets of talent, developing them into high powered stars and maintaining a cycle of talent creation.
Last season when the Winterhawks won the Ed Chenowyth Cup for the WHL Finals and moved on to the Memorial Cup, it was a bittersweet time. Their General Manager and Coach Mike Johnston had been suspended, the team had lost nine draft picks and fined $200,000. Following that debacle, the team became dubbed “The Evil Empire” and made sure that their efforts did not go unrewarded. Since last year, the Ontario Hockey League changed some of its rules to reflect acceptance of some of what the Winterhawks had been penalized for. The Winterhawks will not gain any of their losses as a result, but hopefully it puts forth the need of the leagues as a whole, to make things a bit stronger for the league to continue to bring in and develop quality players.
This season, the Winterhawks looked to build on last season’s successes and had an impressive season. While the start wasn’t what anyone had hoped for, a 21-game winning streak after the mid-season break, followed by another lengthy streak into the playoffs, gave the Winterhawks fans some real feeling that they would return back to the Memorial Cup. After winning round one in four games and the next two series in five games, one of which was against the top team in the WHL, the Kelowna Rockets, the next series versus the Edmonton Oil Kings was thought to be as close to a walk in the park as one could get. The first two games saw the Hawks take 5-2 and 3-1 wins with solid play, outstanding goaltending and two sold out home crowds. Something seemed to changed once the teams shifted to Edmonton. The Hawks weren’t as sharp, the Oil Kings were and combined with questionable officiating, the series would be tied at two and head back to Portland. Portland would lose another tough game and be down in the series as it headed back to Edmonton. During Game 6, the Hawks had to make some serious comebacks. Down 3-0 in the first period, the Hawks made a decision to switch goaltenders and unlike some switches where the goaltender coming out storms back to the dressing room, Corbin Boes instead took the time to develop and give a motivational speech in the break. The Hawks got close with a 3-2 score, before Edmonton pulled away with three more goals and seemed top be well on their way with just ten minutes left in the third period. Using everything they had, the players took it up a notch and would score the next three goals to bring the game into overtime. The Hawks ended the scoring just over seven minutes into overtime to be able to bring the series back to Portland. Ultimately, the Hawks would fall to Edmonton and miss the opportunity to get a second consecutive chance at the Memorial Cup. There was talk following the game that several Winterhawks players had played the past two games with flu like symptoms and postgame media interviews with some players seemed to reflect that as well.
There would be no excuses offered though and the Hawks would say goodbye to several players this week. Gone will be twenty-year olds Garrett Haar, Adam Rossignol and Corbin Boes, plus soon to be twenties in Derrick Pouliot, Taylor Leier and Brenden Leipsic. Already the Winterhawks have some players ready to take their places like defenseman Blake Heinrich who played one game during the Edmonton series.
In the coming weeks, the Winterhawks and their fans will watch NHL Draft Day and then gear up for training camp and before you know it, it will be the start of the next season. While it’s disappointing that the Hawks couldn’t play one more week of hockey, they managed to make it nearly two months longer than the majority of the other teams.
Ice Chips: The Portland Winterhawks Booster Club assisted The Gift of Gear program with three young potential players obtaining gear to be able to learn to play hockey. The Booster Club was able to donate over $10,000 to local hockey charities. Nearly 600 members joined the Club this past season with nearly 400 signed up in advance for next season.
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