Cougars opening playoffs on home ice

If the Prince George Cougars expect to advance to the second round of the WHL playoffs, they’d be wise to keep a close watch on Cody Glass. The 17-year-old from Winnipeg has been a centre of attention for NHL scouts narrowing down their prospective first-rounders for the draft and there seems little doubt Glass will hear his name called among the top 30 this June.

In his second season with the Portland Winterhawks, after a 27-point rookie season, Glass came out of nowhere to end up seventh in league scoring. He finished with 32 goals and 94 points and was picked for the Western Conference first all-star team.

“He’s a smart, two-way centre who sees the ice well and kills penalties for us now and he’s turning into a good all-around player as recognized by his draft status,” said Winterhawks head coach Mike Johnston, whose team opens a best-of-seven series against the Cougars tonight (7 p.m.) and Sunday (5 p.m.) at CN Centre.

“But he’s only had four games of playoff experience, so that’s not a lot.”

The Cougars don’t have an abundance of post-season experience either, coming off two-straight first-round eliminations. But what they do have going for them is a league-high 13 1997-born players and three overagers in their lineup, pitted against one of the youngest teams in the league. The Cats believe those extra years of seasoning will put them over the top in the series.

“We’re fast and physical and when we keep it simple and play our system to what we should be playing in, and we can roll four lines and six defencemen, we really like our chances,” said Cougars head coach Richard Matvichuk. “If we start cheating and getting on the offside things and turning pucks over in the wrong areas then we start chasing it and that’s when we get into trouble.

“We’re an older team built around our ’97 birth years and they’ve got (four) ‘99s, but don’t get me wrong. They play their system pretty well, but if we play our system well we’ll be OK.”

They will be if they limit the damage from the Winterhawks’ top line. With Glass as the playmaker, 18-year-old left winger Skylar McKenzie as the speedy finisher, and Keegan Iverson, a 20-year-old fifth-year Winterhawk, as the power forward, that one line combined for 100 goals and 284 points.

The Winterhawks averaged 3.86 goals per game, scoring 278 times, second in the Western Conference only to Kelowna (283 goals). The Cougars potted 253 goals (tied for fourth in the West with Seattle) but allowed just 201 goals (thirdbest in the WHL). Portland gave up 256 goals (13th in the WHL).

Glass wasn’t the only young Winterhawk to blossom this season. Ryan Hughes (27-30-57) put up great numbers as a 17-yearold centre and Portland got great mileage from defencemen Brendan De Jong, 18, and Henri Jokiharju, 17, who both proved ready for top-four roles with veterans Caleb Jones and Keoni Texiera.

Much of the Winterhawks’ offence starts with Jones. The 19-year-old Edmonton Oilers’ signed prospect ranked fourth in team scoring with nine goals and 62 points. Jones is Portland’s answer to Brendan Guhle, the smooth-skating defenceman who became the Cougars’ MVP since arriving in November in a trade from Prince Albert.

“(Jones is) very competitive, good awareness, he’s played for the U.S. program and been to world championships and just recently won the world junior for the U.S. and those types of experiences, especially at this time of year, are key,” said Johnston, the Western Conference coach of the year, who returned to Portland this season after he was fired at midseason last year as head coach of the eventual Stanley Cup-champion Pittsburgh Penguins.

Just five wins and 12 points separated the Cougars (54-21-3-3) from the Winterhawks (40-28-1-3) and both teams are going into the playoffs on relative hot streaks. The Cougars went 7-2-0-1 in their last 10 games, while the ‘Hawks were 8-2-0-0 over that same stretch. Each team won twice in the four times they played each other.

“For sure that gives you some confidence that we’ve had some success during the season but at the same time we know it’s a different level in the playoffs,” said Johnston.

“We don’t have a lot of experience in the playoffs in our lineup, but we certainly have a core of guys who have been through it and I know P.G. is a pretty experienced team.

“Certainly they are deep, with good scoring out of each of the lines, but we feel we can match that with six 20-plus goal-scorers in the lineup.”

The Cougars epitomize the term scoring by committee. Jansen Harkins led the Cats with 72 points while becoming the all-time leading point-getter in franchise history, but like the other seven Cougars who scored 20 or more goals, Harkins was nowhere near the WHL’s top-10 point producers. In fact he was 37th overall, two points ahead of Nikita Popugaev (29-40-69) on the team list. Jesse Gabrielle followed up a 40-goal season last year to lead the Cats in goals with 35 and totaled 64 points, one more than Radovan Bondra, who came on strong after arriving in a trade from Vancouver.

But as of today, every player on each team is starting with a clean slate.

“These are the fun times – this is where all the individual statistics go out the door and you have to play for what’s on the front of your jersey,” said Matvichuk. “We felt all year long our ultimate goal was to make the playoffs and then whatever was above that (with winning) the division and now here we are sitting with home advantage. We’re exactly where we want to be.”

The Winterhawks will be sporting two Prince George connections on the blueline. Former Cariboo Cougars midget defenceman Conor MacEachern, 18, is in his second year with the ‘Hawks, while former WHL Cougar Shaun Dosanjh, 20, is in his final junior season.

In goal, Cole Kehler, 19, played 56 games for Portland and put up respectable numbers (3.10 goals-against average, .910 save percentage) since he joined the team in the off-season after a season with Merritt (BCHL) and two years with the Kamloops Blazers. He’ll go head-to-head with Ty Edmonds, the Cougars’ 20-year-old starter, who had his best season, finishing third in the WHL with a 2.48 average and a fifthbest .916 save percentage.

The Cougars have taken heat throughout the season for their lack of success on the power play. They finished 17th in the WHL (17.69 per cent), while Portland’s PP ranked fifth overall (24.8 per cent) and was even deadlier on the road (30.2 per cent). Both teams have effective penalty killing. The Cougars ranked fourth (83.1 per cent) and the ’Hawks were eighth (80.2 per cent).

Prince George and Portland are 1,117 kilometres apart and travel could be a factor for both teams. Portland, where the series will shift for Games 3 and 4 on Wednesday and Thursday, has been a tough place to play for opposing teams. The Winterhawks went 2212-1-1 at home this season, very close to the Cougars’ 22-10-1-3 home record.

Both teams are healthy. Portland winger Evan Weinger is close to returning from a lower-body injury and Cougars winger Brad Morrison is back after missing nine games with an upper-ankle sprain.

Prediction: The experience factor gives Prince George the edge against a talented ’Hawks team that is a powerhouse in the making. The Cats will win it in six games.