The Portland Winterhawks played on home ice for the first time in nearly a month and treated fans with a pair of dramatic victories over the Spokane Chiefs on Friday and Saturday at the Rose Garden.
On Friday, Portland’s Brad Ross scored with 40.5 seconds left in regulation to tie the game at 5-5 and force overtime. With neither team scoring in sudden death, it took six rounds of shootout before Taylor Leier slipped the puck between the legs of Spokane goalie Mac Engel to win the shootout, 4-3, and give the Hawks a 6-5 victory on the night.
Portland’s penchant for thrilling victories extended into Saturday, when an extra frame was again needed after Spokane rallied back from a two-goal deficit in the third period to tie it up at 3-3.
But it only took the Winterhawks 30 seconds of extra time before Ty Rattie and Sven Bartschi teamed up for a highlight-reel ready give-and-go goal that ended the game 4-3 and threw the announced crowd of 10,123 into a frenzy.
Fed by defenseman Tyler Wotherspoon from deep inside the Portland zone and moving along the boards, Bartschi passed the puck to Rattie at the Spokane blue line before breaking to the right while Rattie took the puck left. As Bartschi neared the top of the crease, Rattie spun away from a defender at the faceoff circle and fired a pass to Bartschi, who backhanded it past Engel’s open glove.
“We came in on the left side and I saw Rattie in the middle and I just passed to him,” Bartschi said. “We practice that a lot—he goes to the outside and just makes a spin around and plays right away to the inside—so I knew what he was doing and I kept going to the net, and it was a perfect pass right on my backhand.”
“It was an easy goal for me after a really good pass from him,” he said.
Portland (13-7-1-1) is now on a five-game winning streak and sits in second place in the Western Hockey League’s U.S. Division. With the four points earned over the weekend, the Hawks now have 28 points and trail conference-leading Tri-City by just two. Spokane (9-4-1-2) remains third in the division with 21 points.
“We got two extra points than they got on the weekend, which is important,” said Portland head coach Mike Johnston after Saturday’s game. “The standings are always so close in our division that, you never know, those two points could be big at the end of the year.”
Rather than getting caught up in the dramatic finishes to both games, Johnston instead remarked about the tenacity his team has shown.
“Our team has shown some good resilience on a lot of occasions early in the season,” he said. “[On Friday] we had to battle from behind all night. We would claw back in and tie it and they would score a go-ahead [goal] and we kept having to come back—so that’s tough. But you like a team that has that resiliency to come back.”
Portland’s spirited special-teams play was also a key to the team’s success over the weekend. The Hawks scored on five of 13 power plays and killed seven of Spokane’s nine opportunities. Entering the weekend, the Winterhawks ranked third in the league in both power plays and penalty kills.
In net, Portland goalie Mac Carruth stopped 59 of 67 shots on the weekend and picked up both wins. He now has 12 wins on the season and a .898 saves percentage in 20 games. For Spokane, Engel stopped 82 of 91 shots.
Rattie led the Hawks in scoring on the weekend with four goals and three assists for seven points. His 37 points lead the Western Conference and his 10 power play goals lead the league.
Bartschi, a first-round draft pick for the Calgary Flames in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft, recorded five assists in addition to Saturday night’s overtime goal. Ross finished the weekend with three goals.