Cougars hope to upset Portland in playoffs
The Prince George Cougars are in the WHL playoffs for the first time in five years but they’re up against the hottest team in the league.
The Portland Winterhawks were the best team in the league in the second half of the season and won nine of their last 10 regular season games heading into the playoffs, which start Friday when they host the 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.
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.
Series 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