The Portland Winterhawks’ Western Conference Hurdles

This column written by Kyle Martinak of PortlandSports.com, a partner of Oregon Sports News

With the next batch of games taking place on home ice and the regular season flying into the last two months soon, the Portland Winterhawks are starting to glance down the barrel of their various competitors in both the U.S. Division and the rest of the Western Conference. If Portland wants a shot at that fifth-straight conference championship, they will need a solid strategy for each.

In the U.S. Division, Portland has recently climbed back to the #2 slot ahead of this Friday’s rival, the Spokane Chiefs. The two teams are neck-and-neck in terms of record and recent showings against each other. Because of the Chiefs’ younger, enthusiastic defensive pairings combined with a seasoned goalie, the major obstacle should be for Portland to out-shoot them. Meanwhile, the Everett Silvertips have maintained a comfy lead in the standings all season. This may be due to their avoidance of penalties, among other reasons. They currently post 252 fewer penalty minutes than Portland, and by far the lowest in the Western Conference. They also hold the lowest numbers for goals allowed, with veteran goalie Austin Lotz boasting a .912 save percentage in 33 games. While I think Portland will inevitably sprint ahead of Spokane, Everett’s handhold is the more disturbing. Now that the Hawks have fine-tuned their defensive situation (especially in-goal), the next step to take the Oregon-Washington territory by storm is to cut the bad penalties and put the offense’s heads together on those odd-man rushes.

Elsewhere, the Conference remains a small pond brimming with huge fish. The Kelowna Rockets have been the most impressive team in the WHL so far this year, barely edging out the Brandon Wheat Kings for the best record in the league with 34-8. As previously discussed, it’s rather strange that half of their losses have been to the Winterhawks. While fans can speculate that Portland is the better team based on these meetings, it’s worth noting that the Hawks have also given up games to the two lowest-ranked teams in the Western Conference (Vancouver Giants and Kamloops Blazers) and the equally undeserving Seattle Thunderbirds…all within the last month or so.

The main enemy for the Winterhawks as we get closer to playoffs time is their own lack of consistency. The big games against big opponents like Kelowna, the Regina Pats, and the Medicine Hat Tigers have all yielded victories, while run-of-the-mill bouts sometimes catch the team flat-footed. Some Portland fans have attributed this to the oddball roster choices made by Jamie Kompon during these perceived “lesser” games. While Coach’s tinkering with special teams and defensive pairings has settled down of late, the recent gimme-type losses seem to be the result of the same problems Portland was dealing with at the beginning of the season, albeit in abbreviated form.

Kamloops tore through the defense (and a rare off-night for Adin Hill in goal) for a 4-0 lead in the first period that we could not get back, resulting ina 6-2 loss. Spokane recently pulled a frankly unacceptable 4-1 victory by dominating Portland in shots on goal and capitalizing on the multiple power plays handed to them, while Seattle squeaked out a 2-1 win while the Winterhawks’ best scorers/team leaders were gone representing their nations in the World Junior Championship.

The over-simplified solution is for the Hawks to treat every game like a game against the Kelowna Rockets from here on out, starting with this Friday. If they can put some distance between their record and Spokane’s, they can move on to Everett and then worry about the rest of the conference…that is, if they want new t-shirts boasting “Back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back,” if they can fit that on a shirt, that is.