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WHL Portland Winterhawks

Round One, Game One Reaction

March 23, 2019 - Western Hockey League (WHL)
Portland Winterhawks News Release


The Winterhawks dropped game one to the Spokane Chiefs on Friday night 5-2 on a game where five of the seven goals were scored on the power play.

"Certainly early in the game, I really felt good about our game," Vice President, General Manager and Head Coach Mike Johnston said. "We gave them a few too many power play opportunities and they capitalized. We know they have a good power play and it was a power play game. Then I thought in the third period we came out strong. I thought our third period overall was really good. They got a couple of goals that they capitalized on. When you look at the game, it was a pretty even game, it wasn't a 5-2 game."

The Winterhawks owned the lead at the end of 20 minutes and were heavily out-shooting the Chiefs 17-9. A deeper look at the numbers and you can see Portland had three power play opportunities to the Spokane's one man advantage in the first period. That heavily favored the Hawks who are now 12-for-44 (27.3%) in March power play opportunities.

"I thought our first power play may have been one of our best ones," Johnston said. "We didn't score on that one and then we scored on two other ones in the game, but the first one we had some great looks and great chances."

The power play is clicking for the Hawks, but they need to address their penalty kill against their first round opponent. Spokane went on to score five unanswered goals on Friday night, three straight on the power play, to lead their victory charge. The Chiefs have 14 power play goals on the season against the Winterhawks and have scored at least one power play goal in all seven head-to-head meetings this year.

All-in-all, there were 13 total power play chances last night. When looking at regular season numbers, the Hawks were shorthanded 307 times, the most of any team in the Western Conference.

This younger Hawks team is learning quickly and are poised to respond with a big performance on the road Saturday night. Last year, the Winterhawks were down 1-0 to start their series against Spokane, but were able to advance to the U.S. Division Finals after the seven game series.

"We want to regroup and take what we did well from tonight's game and then learn from the things we can improve in, there are several areas, but I liked a lot of our game tonight and we have 36 shots, I think they had 22 or 24, if we can keep them to that and we can get that many shots (in game two), I think we'll be fine."

Games three and four of the series return to the Rose Garden on Tuesday and Wednesday night at 7:00 p.m.

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Western Hockey League Stories from March 23, 2019


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