On Wednesday evening the Portland Winterhawks (7-3-0-1) defeated the visiting Prince Albert Raiders (7-2-3-0) by a score of 4-3, Reece Newkirk played a key role with his two goals and two assists.
Entering the evening the 2019 New York Islanders draft selection had one goal and ten assists. He leaves the Veterans Memorial Coliseum with three goals and 12 assists to his name.
“I wouldn’t be there without my line and the power play there. Jake (Gricius), Johnny (Ludvig), Seth (Jarvis), and Jaydon (Dureau) made some good plays tonight.”
A Newkirk power-play goal and Seth Jarvis finished off a great read from Reece meant Prince Albert trailed early 2-0.
Raiders’ head coach Marc Habscheid felt, “it was probably two different games, first half/second half. They won the first half and we won the second half. We didn’t start real good again. We were skating in quicksand. I thought our top guys weren’t great, and then the rest of the guys were okay. I thought once we got going we were okay.”
The Raiders are in the middle of their trip through the U.S. Division. Prior to facing the Winterhawks on Wednesday, they lost in overtime to Everett and in regulation to Seattle.
“We should have won the game in Everett, last night we were skating in quicksand, tonight it was just off, but we are fine,” Habscheid said.
The Raiders bounced back strong in the middle to late portions of the second. Jakob Brook was rewarded with his first goal after Reece Vitelli picked the pocket of a Portland player behind the net.
Newkirk’s impressive night continued thanks to a Jake Gricius power-play goal. Reece’s pass went in off the 20-year-old’s skate in front of starter Boston Bilous.
After the goal, Carter Serhyenko replaced the 18-year-old for the remainder of the game.
Newkirk mentioned how the second power-play goal of the game was a result of “the pre-scout before the game with Gussy (Kyle Gustafson). He is telling us what to do, and the guys that are going out there are capitalizing.”
Portland went 2 for 4 on Wednesday and is currently first in the WHL with a 28.6% success rate as of Wednesday.
Kyle Gustafson, associate coach, and assistant general manager talked about the early results on the man advantage. “It is always a work in progress. Coming out of training camp we were not quite sure what we were going to do. Didn’t really have a power-play defenseman like we’ve had in the past with the Jones and Jokiharju’s. Do you put five forwards, four forwards, kind of help along a defenseman and have two defense out there. So it was always something in progress that we had to keep working on.”
In addition to coaching the defense, Gustafson coaches the power play. He continued saying how “Then Luds (Ludvig) had the start that he had. He was scoring on the power play. We really had to get back to basics and get it right down to the studs. When you look at a power play, it is about shooting the puck. That is where Johnny was able to cash in. Then all of a sudden, once that occurs, maybe they neglect Jarvis and he gets more touches with the puck and more time. Then all of a sudden he creates chemistry like you saw with Newkirk tonight and now they have a little bit of a thing going. I thought Jake was phenomenal at the net. He got the one off his skate there that counted. It is something whether it is Don on the penalty kill. Or myself on the power play, every day in practice we break it down either with video or on-ice concepts. We know that if we are going to be elite, or a good team, our power play has to click.
Early in the third period, the Raiders got within one after Jeremy Masella found a loose puck in the slot. The Phoenix, Arizona native followed up a two-on-one rush one-timing a shot by Joel Hofer.
Prince Albert pushed hard in the final five minutes as they sought the equalizer. They kept Portland in their own zone on many occasions, often forcing the Winterhawks to have to just dump the puck in for a line change.
“It was good for our young guys to go through a tight-checking game like that,” Gustafson said. “There were situations where we have to be sharper with the puck. I thought we turned it over, and they did a good job trapping up the neutral zone, that was a real obstacle for us to get through. We had to dig in. We had to try to find our game in moments. It is all about momentum, they carried it, we carried it, and they were pressing late and got the goal with four seconds and kind of shocked us up a little bit too.
A key moment came after a hand pass on Prince Albert. The faceoff came outside the Portland blue line, and the Raiders called a timeout.
Jake Gricius won the faceoff to Reece Newkirk who immediately fired it from center into the open net giving Portland the 4-2 lead.
“We had a little timeout there at the end, they set up a play,” Newkirk said. “Jake (Gricius) has been great on faceoffs and is our guy when it comes down to faceoffs. He has been great all year. I kind of have an idea with Jake, he is a great centerman and is going to win it to that backhand side. I knew it was either going to come to me or the D, luckily it came to me.”
Gustafson also talked about the faceoff, “It was really, really important not only for Jake to win it, but for Reece to be on his toes. It was good we had a timeout situation, they called and we were able to get organized. The biggest thing is being on your toes win or lose, how are you going to react to it? We got the early jump.”
The game was not over though as Tyson Laventure netted his first goal of the 2019-2020 season with 4.9 seconds left.
Nothing additional came and the Winterhawks pushed their home winning streak to four.
For Prince Albert, they finish their U.S. Division swing with stops in Tri-City on Friday and Spokane on Saturday. For Marc Habscheid, the message was simple, “Just keep working, keep building, we are a young team, we just have to keep going.”
The Winterhawks are also in action again on Friday as they travel west to play their first game this regular season against the Spokane Chiefs.
Wednesday though was ultimately summarized by Gustafson with, “A real good start. We knew it was going to be a dog fight. Anytime you have the defending champion in your building there are a lot of attributes they bring, they are always in the game and are a heavy team. They are never out of it like we had the great start. We just knew at some point there was going to be a push. We were trying to help our guys along the way, educate them that it is coming, it is coming.”
The young Winterhawks accomplished the task at hand on Wednesday night.
