When Taylor Gauthier got traded to the Portland Winterhawks in late December, he knew the goaltending situation in Prince George was in good hands.
Tyler Brennan reminded him how capable he is as Gauthier’s replacement Saturday night in Portland when he kept the Prince George Cougars in the game with a 44-save outing which ended in a 2-1 Cougar loss.
The two netminders became good friends in their 2 ½ seasons together with the Cats and Gauthier wants Brennan to do well, but he’s hoping the Winterhawks shooters will find a few more chinks in his armour when they meet again on the ice in Game 3 of their WHL playoff series Tuesday (7 p.m.) at CN Centre.
“As I was saying to my dad, who made the trip down, I think that was the best game I’ve seen him play,” said Gauthier. “It was nice to see him have his coming-out party last game. It added a little more stress at my end, but it was a fun battle and I’m looking forward to a couple more good goalie battles Tuesday and Wednesday.”
Having won the first game 5-2 Friday in Portland, the Winterhawks have allowed just three goals in two games and lead the best-of-seven Western Conference quarterfinal series 2-0, with a chance to wrap it up in Prince George and book their ticket into the second round. Gauthier knows the Cougars will put up stiff resistance playing on home ice.
“They’ve been battling hard and we knew it was going to be like that,” he said. “It’s a brand-new season and they’ve been playing hard, playing right with us and it’s tight-checking. It’s a testament to our team; we’re playing really good defensive hockey and we’re getting contributions from everyone.”
Drawing the Cougars as a first-round opponent was a dream scenario for Gauthier, who will no doubt get warm greetings from the fans at CN Centre, which was home for Gauthier for the first 4 ½ years of his WHL career before the trade was made.
“It’s been fun battling against guys that I have good relationships with, I have lots of friends on the team but right now it’s friends off,” said Gauthier. “It’s fun competing and trying my hardest not to let them score and they’re trying their hardest to score.
“I’m looking forward to seeing CN Centre bumping tomorrow night with a lot of fans. This rink is something special when it gets filled up and it’s going to be fun. This place is like my second home and it’s given me so much opportunity and helped me grow so much as a player and a person. It’s fun to be back and I’m really looking forward to seeing a playoff atmosphere in this building.”
The pandemic wiped out the playoffs the previous two seasons and none of the Cougars and only a handful of Winterhawks had ever played previously in the WHL playoffs. Gauthier and the Cougars were not in a position to make the playoffs in any of his four previous seasons in Prince George, but that’s not to say he doesn’t have big-game experience. He played for Canada at the world under-18 championship and at the Ivan Hlinka Cup, in which he won the gold-medal game in 2018.
“It’s a theme around the league this year, there’s a lot of teams that don’t have a lot of playoff experience and we have four of five guys who have played playoffs before and I would think we’re probably one of the more experienced teams,” Gauthier said.
“Guys have been in the league three years now and this is their first playoff experience and it’s different but we’re all enjoying it and we’re all having a lot of fun with it. It’s a whole different brand of hockey and hopefully we’ll keep playing well. You kind of have to dig a little deeper and find that extra gear that sometimes in the dog days of the regular season is hard to find.”
There’s been no lack of intensity from either team in the first two games of the series and perhaps the overenthusiasm shown by the Cougars is what’s led to penalty trouble. The “Hawks power play scored twice in five chances in Game 1 and one of the other first-period goals they scored came within two seconds of Prince George penalty expiring. The Cougars took five minor penalties in Game 2 and killed each one successfully, but that’s playing with fire against a Portland team that averaged 4.38 goals per game during the season.
“We played well in Portland but we’ve got to stay out of the penalty box,” said Cougars head coach and general manager Mark Lamb. “We got in trouble the first game, taking too many penalties, and we did in the second game also. I just think that you’ve got to be more aware. There’s some unlucky ones and there are some that are trends, the same guys that are taking them, and that’s where you have to clean it up.”
Lamb didn’t name his starting goalie but you can bet the farm Brennan will get the nod.
“You need good goaltending and he gave us a chance to win,” said Lamb. “We expect that out of both our goalies.”
The Cougars will have to be much better at finishing their chances if they expect to send the series back to Portland for Game 5 on Saturday. Three goals in two games is not enough to win.
“There’s no secret to scoring goals,” said Lamb. “You’ve got to get in front of Gauthier and get second and third chances and you’ve got to be relentless at it to get it around the blue paint and get screens, it’s hard.
“We’ve got to play better. We’re down two games to nothing and we can’t be happy with how we’ve played, we’ve just played alright and we’ve got to play better than alright.”
Cougars defenceman Hudson Thornton said his team gained confidence in the two playoff games and they know they can skate with the Winterhawks.
“Those first two games were really good for us and kind of opened our eyes a little bit on what playoffs are like,” said Thornton. “Nobody on our team has been in playoffs before so it was good for us to get our feet wet a little bit. Portland is a good team but we’re right there with them and hopefully we’ll come back to P.G. tomorrow and the next day and get the job done.
“Gauthier’s a real good goaltender but we can score on him if we get traffic and get in his way and put pucks on net. There hasn’t been a playoff game here in five years and hopefully, playing in front of good crowd will be awesome and hopefully it will bring the fans what they want.”
Playing 5-on-5 the teams have looked evenly-matched, it’s those penalties that are killing the Cougars. Although they didn’t get scored on Saturday, the Cats’ penalty-killers were feeling plenty of heat.
“It’s just about being disciplined and maturity, we’ve just got to realize the importance of every single play and we just can’t take those,” said Cougars captain Jonny Hooker. “We have the belief that we can (win) and that’s all we’re focused on.”
Winterhawks associate coach Don Hay handles the Portland defence corps which includes five 17-year-old rookies and just two veterans, one of whom is on the injured list. As well as Gauthier played in the two games, Hay was pleased to see his defenceman rise to the occasion in the two games in Portland. Luca Cagnoni took over for injured 20-year-old Clay Hanus as the power-play quarterback and in the second period he jumped into the rush to score the second Portland goal Saturday, which turned out the gamewinner.
“We did what we had to do in Portland and had success there and I thought both games we played really well,” said Hay. “The second game was closer but we didn’t give up a lot of scoring chances and we generated more. Brennan was the reason it was a 2-1 game.
“Luca Cagnoni did a great job replacing Clay, taking a turn on the power play and helping the defence really not miss a beat without Clay. He’s one of the top-scoring defencemen in the league and we do miss him, but the young kids on the back end really stepped up played well.
“At the start of the year we had three 20-year-olds, we had Clay, Kade Nolan and Jonas Brondberg. We liked our group of young guys but we weren’t giving them enough opportunity to show us what they could do, so Kade was traded to Lethbridge (in November) and when we had the chance to get Taylor from Prince George we had to give up a 20-year-old and that was Jonas.”
LOOSE PUCKS: Tickets are available at the CN Centre box office or online on the team website. C Craig Armstrong will sit out Tuesday’s game to serve out the rest of a two-game suspension for making head contact with “Hawks D Kurtis Smythe at the end of Friday’s game in Portland. Rookie Carlin Dezainde played well Saturday taking over Armstrong’s centre slot on a line with Hooker and Ryker Singer … Hanus, who got hurt in a collision with a Cougar in the first period in Game 1, did not make the trip and neither did LW Aidan Litke, who also suffered an injury in Friday’s game. Litke scored the first goal of the series on a ‘Hawks power play 1:55 into Game 1.
