The Portland Winterhawks were the hottest team in the WHL in the second half of the season and that rings especially true when you look at their record over the past month.
The Winterhawks ran the table in the homestretch with six straight wins, having won nine of their last 10 games heading into the playoffs, which start Friday when they host the Prince George Cougars in the first game of their WHL Western Conference quarterfinal series.
The ‘Hawks made an abrupt turnaround after losing 10 of their first 15 games and finished third in the West (47-16-3-2) with 99 points, tied with second-place Kamloops Blazers and just one off the pace of the first-place Everett Silvertips.
The Cougars (24-39-4-1) had a much more difficult time trying to cinch the team’s first playoff berth in five years. That wasn’t determined until Saturday, the second-last day of the season, when they emerged out of a three-way tie with Spokane and Vancouver to claim sixth place.
Thirty-six points separated the Winterhawks from the Cougars in the conference standings and this best-of-seven series has all signs pointing to mismatch. The ‘Hawks won all four games on the season series – 6-2 Dec. 1 in Portland, 4-1 Jan. 28 in Portland, then posted back-to-back victories in Prince George Feb. 25-26, 7-2 and 5-3.
That doesn’t matter now to the Cougars; both teams are working with a clean slate.
“I feel like there’s no better matchup for us,” said Cougars 21-year-old centre Connor Bowie, who joined the Cougars Jan 10, 2018 as part of a multiplayer trade which sent defenceman Dennis Cholowski to Portland. “We’re a team that matches up well with them in the sense that we want to be physical and they want to be skilled, and hopefully we can get an aggressive, gritty-style playoff series going and see what happens. We can be physical and they don’t want to play the style that we like to play and that might be in our favour.
“I’m just excited that we happen to be in the WHL playoffs, it’s just the cherry on top that we happen to be playing Portland.”
The goalie the Cougars will be trying to beat to start the series is 21-year-old Taylor Gauthier, who played 166 of his 194 WHL games the past five seasons stopping pucks for the Cougars.
“That just adds to it,” said Bowie. “Obviously, a lot of us know Goats pretty well and we’re really excited to talk to him and eventually beat him in the playoffs. I’ll definitely bump him a little bit and say a few things to him. It’s the playoffs and you’ve got to do what you can.”
Stats don’t lie and the Winterhawks have a huge edge in virtually every department.
Only one WHL team, Winnipeg, with 317 goals, scored more over the course of the 68-game WHL season than Portland, with 298. The ‘Hawks averaged 4.38 per game, as compared to the Cougars’ 2.60 average. Scoring just 177 goals, Prince George ranked 21st out of 22 teams.
Three Winterhawks were among the league’s top-26 pointgetters, including Texas native Cross Hanas, a second-round pick of the Detroit Red Wings in 2020, who led Portland with 23 goals and 60 assists for 86 points. Fellow right-winger James Stefan wasn’t far off that pace with 79 points, including 34 goals, and Clay Hanus, 21, led all Portland defencemen with 18 goals and 74 points.
“Clay’s had a great year and he’s taken his game to another new level,” said Winterhawks head coach and general manager Mike Johnston. “He’s a player that’s been with us since he was 16 years old and it’s nice to see him mature into the type of player he is and a captain on our team. He had more points in a season than any other defenceman on our team in the last 20 years so that’s quite an accomplishment.”
Centre Tyson Kozak, a third-year veteran picked by Buffalo in the seventh round in 2021, put up 32 goals and 69 points as the ‘Hawks’ top two-way forward and their MVP. LW Jaydon Dureau, was reassigned to Portland in November after starting the season in the AHL, which limited the Tampa Bay fifth-rounder in 2020 to 49 games, but he still managed a 24-goal, 66-point season.
Bolstered by the acquisition of Gauthier, who sported a 2.24 goals-against average (fourth in WHL) and league-best .928 save percentage, the Winterhawks have stifled opponents with their team defence. They allowed just 192 goals (2.82 average, fifth in WHL), as compared to the Cougars, who gave up 240 goals (3.52 average, 19th in WHL). Gauthier broke the club record for longest shutout streak – 251 minutes 11 seconds – which started in the first period Jan. 28 against the Cougars and he went on a 7-0 run. Johnston brought him in to share the duties with 19-year-old veteran Dante Giannuzzi, giving the ‘Hawks a solid goaltending tandem geared for a lengthy playoff run.
“Anything can happen and you have to be protected and Taylor was one of the guys we had looked at throughout the year and I really liked his game overall,” said Johnston. “When he developed in P.G. he was calm, he was poised, he had great rebound control, plus he was experienced, and those are the things I liked about him. He’s been really good in the room with his leadership and on the ice, his record is something you shake your head at. He did some amazing things when he came here.”
Luca Cagnoni, a Burnaby native, emerged as the ‘Hawks rookie of the year with nine goals and 36 points. Bypassed in the WHL draft, the 17-year-old Cagnoni now quarterbacks the ‘Hawks second power-play unit. Portland’s roster includes 11 WHL freshmen and five of them are defencemen.
“The big reason is because of the COVID year last year when we didn’t really have many guys in, and this year we didn’t add any 16-year-olds, so we have four 17 year-old defencemen,” said Johnston. “That’s a unique situation but they’ve played well through the year. We’re quite happy with how they’ve progressed and we think that’s a key to our success.”
As green as the Winterhawks are, the Cougars are the youngest team in the WHL and they also played the season with 11 rookies, three of whom were their top-three scorers. Sixteen-year-old Riley Heidt led the Cats with 58 points, one more than 17-year-old Koehn Ziemmer, who tied Brett Connolly’s team rookie goal-scoring record from 2007-08 with 30 goals this season. Defenceman Hudson Thornton, 18, in his first full WHL season, collected 14 goals and 45 points, two ahead of 19-year-old Philadelphia Flyers pick Ethan Samson, who led all Cats’ defencemen with 15 goals.
Moving Gauthier to Portland allowed Tyler Brennan the playing time he needed to reaffirm his status as NHL Central Scouting’s top North American goaltending prospect. He picked up his play after a slow start early in the season and in 39 games he put up a 3.58 GAA and .899 save percentage with four shutouts. An upper-body injury sidelined Brennan the last two weeks of the season and that allowed 17-year-old Ty Young to show his capabilities and he was spectacular down the stretch, playing 23 games for a 3.50 GAA and .899 average.
“Since my first year it’s been a goal of ours - five years without playoff hockey in Prince George - it’s a huge accomplishment for us and we’re going to try to make it as far as we can,” said Brennan. “It’s a good challenge for us in the first round and obviously going up against Goat, we’ve been good buddies the last couple years and I think it’s going to be a good matchup between the two teams.
“I’m excited to play him and hopefully beat him and knock him out. We’ve been playing really well lately and if we can continue that we can have some success. If everybody comes to play and it on board I think we can beat anybody.
"That game on Friday in Kamloops (a 4-2 Cougar win) was huge for us. It was a bit of a learning step for us, knowing we can beat every team if we play the right way and I think after that, we have a lot of confidence going into playoffs.”
Portland’s special teams rank near the top of the WHL with the fifth-best power play (25.5 per cent, 72-for-282) and fourth-best penalty killing (83.2 per cent, 47-for-280). The Cougars rank 17th in power plays (18.3 per cent, 42-for-230) and their PK was 16th (77.7 per cent, 56-for-251).
Cougars 20-year-old defenceman Jonas Brondberg knows the Winterhawks better than any of his teammates. He played 20 games for Portland last season since arriving in the WHL from his native Denmark as an import draft pick and was with the ‘Hawks for 20 more games this season before he was traded to the Cougars in the Gauthier deal.
“It’s very special, first getting to the playoffs and then meeting your old team, and that will be nice,” Brondberg said. “I’m excited to beat them.
“We’ve had some good games to end it off here and I’ve really seen us evolve a lot these past two months and I see us very ready for the playoffs. We’re definitely not a walkover and Portland should respect us. We’ll be coming in with a lot of energy.
"They are very good and very skilled, but we can definitely beat them. We’re good in close games and from seeing them this season they’re good at outscoring teams, but we have a good goalie, good defence and good systems, so if we keep them down to a couple goals and get some on them we’ll frustrate them and stir some stuff up. No one except us expects us to win and it will be exciting.”
Portland will host the first two games Friday and Saturday at Veterans Memorial Arena and the series comes to Prince George for games at CN Centre Tuesday and Wednesday. If it goes beyond that, the games would follow two days after each other with one full day of travel in between – a one-way trip that covers 1,172 kilometres.
The Cougars and Winterhawks have met in the WHL playoffs three times previously. In 2017 the Cougars won their only WHL division regular season title and as B.C. Division champions they were favoured to beat Portland in 2017 but lost to a six-game series. In 2001, the Winterhawks finished seventh in the conference and eliminated the 12th ranked Cats in another six-game series. In 1997, their third year in Prince George since the franchise shifted north from Victoria, the Cougars finished sixth in the West Division and with a lineup that included future NHL pros Zdeno Chara, Blair Betts, Eric Brewer, Chris Mason and Ronald Petrovicky they stunned the first-place Hawks with a 4-2 series win.
“Maybe it’s time for a repeat,” said Bowie.
Johnston downplayed the significance of what on paper appears to be a mismatch.
“Anything can happen in playoffs, we’re well-aware of that,” he said. “At this time of year you’re going to see some surprising things as the playoffs start. It doesn’t matter where you finish, it’s getting a little bit of momentum.
“In our dressing room I think we have five guys who have been in the playoffs before. Because of COVID the last two years, nobody in our league had playoff hockey, so there’s a lot of inexperience. Playoff hockey is a different level and I think that teams that got on a bit of role early will tend to be the teams that push deeper in the playoffs.”
Prince George Cougars vs. Portland Winterhawks
Western Conference quarterfinal schedule
Game 1: Friday at Portland, 7 p.m.
Game 2: Saturday at Portland, 6 p.m.
Game 3: Tuesday at Prince George, 7 p.m.
Game 4: Wednesday at Prince George, 7 p.m.
* Game 5: Saturday at Portland, 5 p.m.
* Game 6: Monday, May 2 at Prince George, 7 p.m.
* Game 7: Wednesday at Portland, 7 p.m.
* if necessary
