|
Written by Dale Woodard
|
|
Wednesday, October 21 2009, 11:26 PM |
Last chance wins.
Chances ‘o plenty were served up as the Lethbridge Hurricanes and Portland Winterhawks locked horns in Western Hockey League action Wednesday night at the Enmax Centre.
But a so-so second period by the ‘Canes combined with a penalty in overtime was enough to turn the tide in favour of the Winterhawks as the visitors scored in the last minute of the extra frame to post a 4-3 win and steal the second point from Lethbridge.
“Our second period was terrible,” said Hurricanes head coach Rich Preston, whose team was outshot 15-12 in the middle stanza. “We had way too many odd-man rushes against. We tried to open it up and play like they were playing. That’s not the way we’re supposed to play. They’re the tired team and we made some mistakes in the second period that cost us. It wasn’t the overtime, it was the second period.”
Portland was first on the board courtesy a penalty shot awarded to centre Stefan Schneider, who managed to squeak a shot past ’Canes netminder Linden Rowat 6:51 into the game. But it didn’t take long for the Hurricanes to even the affair and they did so with some special teams of their own.
Hurricanes forward Austin Fyten burst in on Winterhawks netminder Ian Curtis and drew a slashing penalty to Troy Rutkowski. It only took Lethbridge 11 seconds to pull the power-play trigger as defenceman Eric Mestery rifled home his second of the season to tie things up at the 7:40 mark of the first.
But the Winterhawks regained the lead before the first period was over when Ryan Johansen roofed a shot past Rowat while on the man advantage with 44 seconds remaining for a 2-1 Portland lead after 20 minutes.
While they were outshot in the second stanza, the Hurricanes supplied the lone tally of the period when Fyten took a feed from Hurricanes captain Carter Bancks and slipped a shot past Curtis to tie it 2-2 at the 13:12 mark.
The Winterhawks moved ahead once again 7:49 into the third on some relentless pressure that Ty Rattie capped off by shovelling a generous rebound home to hand the visitors a 3-2 lead.
But with time winding down, the Hurricanes struck for the equalizer when Bancks sent a pass out from behind the Winterhawks net that Mitch Maxwell was able to put home to knot the score at 3-3 with 6:52 left in regulation.
However, with Bancks in the box for tripping, Portland put the game in the books when Neiderreiter scored in the last minute of overtime.
“That’s a good, skilled team they have and you have to play well defensively and I don’t think we did,” said Preston. “We gave up too many odd-man rushes. Our forwards coming back defensively, we didn’t have a high guy in the zone a lot of times. With a skilled team like that it allowed them to come at us. We weren’t very smart there, but we fought back and had a great goal in the third to tie it up. It was an unfortunate penalty in overtime.”
The surrendered power play in overtime aside, the Hurricanes man advantage unit went 2-for-7 on the night.
“We got a couple of goals on the power play and that was a positive,” said Preston. “There’s no reason the power play shouldn’t be (getting goals). You look at our personnel. The Regina game where we were one-for-nine the power play was good. It didn’t sound like it was good, we just didn’t score. We did everything right, (but) a lot of times that happens. That`s the least of our worries.”
Hurricanes return to action Sunday when they host the Moose Jaw Warriors at 6 p.m. at the Enmax Centre.
|
