Portland Winterhawks/Matthew Wolfe

Blichfeld wins scoring title, Winterhawks fall in season finale

In the final regular season game of the 2018-2019 season, the Portland Winterhawks (40-22-3-3) met the Seattle Thunderbirds (31-29-6-2) for the 12th and final time.

Seattle, already locked into their playoff position as the second wild card in the Western Conference, rested their top three scorers (Matthew Wedman, Noah Philp, and Nolan Volcan) as well as goaltender Roddy Ross.

The Winterhawks needed a win in order to secure the home-ice advantage in their first round matchup with the Spokane Chiefs.

When the final horn sounded Seattle emerged with a hard-fought 6-5 victory over their rivals to the south.

Joachim Blichfeld (Photo: Portland Winterhawks/Keith Dwiggins)

Joachim Blichfeld, playing in his final regular season game in the WHL, entered the night tied for the WHL scoring lead with Moose Jaw’s Tristin Langan at 113 points.

Jared Freadrich scored with 1.1 seconds remaining after one-timing a pass from Blichfeld. The assist ensured the San Jose Sharks prospect won the scoring title outright.

Portland Winterhawks Head Coach Mike Johnston said, “It means a lot to him and to us to have the leading scorer in the league. He has earned it, deserved it, been the leader all year, played every game, and he’s our MVP as you saw before the game. It is a great credit for him that he won it clean.”

While Blichfeld was excited for winning the scoring title, he was more disappointed by the result of the game, “We were really going for the win. Felt nice for [Freadrich’s goal] to go in, but we were playing for home ice. We didn’t come out with the two points we wanted.”

Portland got the start to the game they wanted. They led by two before the six minute mark of the first period with goals by Reece Newkirk and Jake Gricius.

Matt O’Dette (Photo: Brian Liesse)

Seattle Thunderbirds Head Coach Matt O’Dette felt, “that was definitely not how we drew up the start. In this building, and anytime you play in Portland, you need to get yourself off to a good start because once momentum gets going the wrong way it can be a tough night. Going down five-on-three to start, bad idea. It looked dicey at the start, but our guys dug in.”

With over 209 points not in the lineup for the Thunderbirds, some of their younger, inexperienced players stepped up.

“I’m pretty proud of the guys, especially the young guys.” O’Dette said. “We had a lot of young guys logging a lot of minutes. We had [Jared] Davidson get one, and he is an ‘02 (birth year). Then Kai [Uchacz], our really young guy, he got one too. It was an opportunity to rest some of our guys and the young guys stepped in and got the job done.”

Simon Kubicek picked up his ninth goal of the season giving Seattle a 3-2 lead.

As quickly as Portland held a 2-0 lead, Seattle turned the score around.

Blichfeld said after the game, “We got up by two in the first, and I don’t know what it was, but we kind of let our guards down. They outworked us and that can’t happen.”

The Winterhawks scored two more goals before the end of the period as Clay Hanus and Seth Jarvis each scored. The first period came to a close with a combined seven goals on 26 shots.

Over the final 39:59 Cole Schwebius shut the door on the Winterhawks stopping 27 shots in the second and third periods.

Schwebius (photo-Brian Liesse)

O’Dette felt Schwebius “was great. Throughout the year he has gotten the tough assignments, Portland and Everett a bunch of times. He has played well and held us in games and was nice to see him get rewarded as he stepped up the last couple of starts playing real well for us. A great kid and a great job by him tonight.”

Seattle’s Brecon Wood, Sean Richards, and Jarret Tyszka scored unanswered giving Seattle the 6-4 advantage with 12 minutes to play.

Tyszka’s eighth goal of the season ended up being the game winner after Portland’s late goal.

Johnston said, “I thought one of our best games of the year was Tuesday night (4-1 win over Everett). I thought one of our worst games of the year might have been [Sunday]. I didn’t think we were good in spurts, and we just didn’t have our game tonight; we were just sloppy.

“I think these last games are really hard to play, really hard to play” Johnston continued. “Everybody is looking towards playoffs. They take some guys out of their lineup so maybe our guys take it a little bit lightly type of thing; I don’t know.”

Portland’s attention now turns to the Spokane Chiefs as they travel to Spokane for game one on Friday night.

Johnston feels “both teams are going to say they want to play well defensively. Both team can explode, they can score, both team’ power plays are good, and I think both teams rely on their power play a little bit. We had a tight series with them last year, I expect the same this year.”

“Playoffs are a totally different animal” Blichfeld said. “Everybody has to bring their A game. The regular season doesn’t matter now as we go to playoffs. We have to work hard and get as far as we can.”

 

Notes:

– Seth Jarvis finished his 16-year-old season with 16 goals and 23 assist for 39 points. On Sunday Johnston said, “He was our best player” while Blichfeld commented, “Seth is the best 16-year-old I’ve seen my whole life; he has a bright future ahead. He has great speed and has everything.”

– Joachim Blichfeld was named team MVP in a pregame ceremony. Afterwards he said, “It feels great, but the whole team helped me throughout the year to get to this point. I’m thankful for all of those guys.”