There's a reason the St. Louis Blues signed Zach Pochiro to a three-year contract.
Saturday night in Portland, the 21-year-old Prince George Cougars winger offered up a reminder to the Portland Winterhawks.
He scored the go-ahead goal for the Cougars late in the third period and when the Winterhawks extended the game to a shootout, Pochiro found a way to end it, ripping a shot past Portland goalie Evan Johnson for the only goal of the showdown session.
That cinched a 6-5 Cougars' victory which allowed the Cats to move into sole possession of third place in the WHL B.C. Division. Combined with the Kamloops Blazers' 2-1 loss Saturday in Kelowna, the Cougars (29-35-2-3) are now two points ahead of the Blazers (27-35-4-3) heading into the final week of the season.
The Cats need to win just one of their three remaining games against Kamloops (at CN Centre Wednesday and Friday, in Kamloops on Saturday) to lock up their first playoff berth since 2011.
The Cougars scored three times in the third period to erase a two-goal deficit against Portland, the defending Western Conference champions, a team that had won nine of its last 12 games.
Pochiro's linemate Chase Witala made it a 4-3 game with his team-leading 37th goal of the season and second of the night, 7:42 into the third. Witala dove to get at the rebound of a Sam Ruopp point shot and tucked it into the net. Jansen Harkins fed the puck to Ruopp for his 59th assist, breaking Quinn Hancock's Cougar single season record for assists, set in 1997-98. Harkins now leads the Cats in scoring with 79 points, tied for 13th in the WHL.
Two minutes after Witala's goal, David Soltes tied it 4-4 with his second goal in two games after missing five games as a healthy scratch, set up by a pass from behind the net from Jari Errcson. Pochiro stole the puck from Layne Viveiros in front of the Portland net, then spun and fired to give the Cougars their first lead of the game with six minutes left.
But at the 16:15 mark, the Winterhawks won an offensive zone faceoff and Oliver Bjorkstrand struck for his league-leading 56th of the season to force overtime. The Cougars caught a break with 15 seconds left in regulation time when Evan Weinger nailed the goalpost behind Ty Edmonds.
"We didn't start the greatest but we found a way to beat one of the hottest team in the Western Hockey League -- the players didn't give up and we came back in the third and had some chances in overtime and finally we won in the shootout," said Cougars assistant coach Roman Vopat. "We were the better team, 5-on-5. We outshot them in the whole game. There's not many teams that come here and beat them and outshoot them."
Kody McDonald also scored for the Cougars, his eight of the season. The Cougars are 8-0 this season in games in which the 16-year-old McDonald scores.
Weinger, Miles Koules, Nic Petan and Chase De Leo were the other Portland goalscorers.
The Cougars outshot Portland 48-37.
Portland scored on both its power-play chances, while Prince George went 0-3.
The Cougars' playoff chances got an additional boost when the Spokane Chiefs defeated the Tri-City Americans 5-2 Saturday in Spokane. The Americans and Blazers are tied with 61 points in the race for the final wild-card sport in the Western Conference. The Americans (29-36-0-3) have the edge based on the fact they have two more wins than Kamloops. Tri-City also has a game in hand over the Blazers, with four games remaining.
"Wednesday is a huge game and if we play like we played (Saturday) and we play hard-nosed hockey but we stay out of the penalty box I don't think we should have a problem," said Vopat.
