The Portland Winterhawks conducted exit interviews on Monday afternoon at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Their season came to an end after a Game 5 loss to Spokane over the weekend. Overall, the Winterhawks had a strong season as they finished with 40 wins for the third straight season. Portland also made the playoffs for the tenth straight year.
The 2018-2019 Portland Winterhawks featured 11 rookies on their playoff roster, ten of which spent the majority of the regular season with the team.
Head coach and general manager Mike Johnston commented on his younger players saying, “We worried at the beginning of the year that we had eight or nine new players to the league. I know that it is a tough league no matter if you are 16 or 17. Coming into the league as a rookie is challenging and there are going to be some moments during the year, usually they are at the beginning of the year, where you will struggle and your confidence will go up and down.”
Johnston continued commenting about the team’s maturity, “I thought it started to round into form around Christmas and our road trip out east. I thought our team still started to make strides even with Cody [Glass] at the World Juniors. I thought our team started to play well but then as the season went along, we ran into a lot of injuries.”
With the injuries Johnston pointed out, “There is more opportunity for guys to play bigger minutes, play more challenging situations, and I thought at that time the 16 and 17-year-olds all stepped up a did a good job. We just had at the end of the year too many injuries to overcome. We had a lot of nagging injuries, whether it is [Matthew] Quigley’s broken finger, [Nick] Perna’s shoulder, [John] Ludvig’s back; it just became to be too much for us to handle. We didn’t have enough bodies to fill in those minutes with enough experience.”
There were multiple other players banged up who Johnston did not mention. Many players were not playing at 100%.
Although the season ended before they preferred, the coaching staff was still positive, “The strides our team made and to get to 40 wins is not something we expected at the beginning of the year” Johnston said. “I thought our group for the future with that experience looks good. Next year we are going to probably add four or five new guys, not eight or nine new guys.”
The experience moving forward will help the rookies as they each now have tasted a playoff series at the level the game increases to in the postseason.
“I wish we had more playoff games because I always think kids grow twice as fast in the playoffs as they do during the regular season” Johnston said. “Our 16-year-olds in the playoffs played primary roles. A lot of times in the playoffs 16-year-olds don’t play very big roles; they play fourth line, maybe an extra defenseman. Our guys played primary minutes, and they did a good job at it. I believe that is going to really help them next year.”
Cody Glass is now making his way to join the Chicago Wolves, the AHL Affiliate of the Vegas Golden Knights.
Johnston reflected on the Winterhawks 43rd captain’s season, “I thought Cody really matured as a player the last couple of years. His work ethic, overall game this year, was at another level. He was clearly the best player in the league and can do everything for you. [Cody Glass] can change the game because of how he played defensively, how he played offensively; he was a game breaker in every area, on the penalty kills and on the power play.”
The Winterhawks played 30 of their 68 regular season games without their captain.
Johnston continued his interview saying, “I wish we had him longer. It is unfortunate that he got banged up at the wrong time. The World Juniors, we always know that we are going to have players on our team, we have good players, they are going to be gone, expect every Christmas we will lose a couple of guys. We knew we would lose Cody, but we didn’t realize that we would have that many different things happen to him in the second half to cause him to be out of the lineup because it is unfortunate for us; he was a key, key guy.”
What is next for the Portland Winterhawks before training camp starts back up in August?
There are two stages according to Johnston. “One, for me right now, is the transition to the draft. The Bantam Draft is very important for us. So we will meet with our scouts, go to some of the camps, be prepared for the Bantam Draft on May 1st.”
Portland’s first selection, not counting for any trades, will come in the 3rd round, 58th overall.
Their first and second round picks were traded at the last two trade deadlines. This year’s first round selection belongs to the Swift Current Broncos as part of the Joel Hofer acquisition. Portland’s second round pick (as well as their sixth round) goes to Prince George as part of the Dennis Cholowski trade from a year ago.
Portland has an extra fifth round choice in 2019. This is a result of the Ty Kolle trade to Lethbridge (Kolle was later traded to Regina by Lethbridge).
The Winterhawks’ also sent their seventh round selection to Prince George for the rights to Bobby Brink.
Later round picks are often moved around frequently. Portland drafted two players in the tenth round last year in exchange to trade the Brandon Wheat Kings their 2019 ninth round selection.
The second stage of the offseason is what Johnston said is “recruiting. There are players on our list that we haven’t signed. So Kyle [Guastafson], myself, and Mike Coflin will head out recruiting and meeting with the families and talking with them about our program seeing if we can get one or two players in that may have been looking at other options. Then we have league meetings and the NHL draft, then finally the Euro (CHL Import Draft) draft. Once the Euro draft happens, the week after the NHL Draft, at the end of June, then you pretty well take a break. You look at July as kind of a down month. Then in August it starts to heat up again.”
Another focus this offseason for Winterhawks fans will be the decision facing assistant coach Don Hay.
The WHL’s all-time winningest coach has yet to make a decision if he will return to Portland for a second season; however, Johnston and the Winterhawks would like to have him back.
“We haven’t really talked about that yet” Johnston said. “We are going to sit down this week and talk about that and his plans. He did a great job for us and certainly if he wants to come back we will have him back. We will have to kind of see what he wants to do. It was a one-year thing where we were scrambling, and he was my number one guy and couldn’t believe we got him. So we are very fortunate to have him for a year; hope we can have him longer, but we will see what his family’s interests are and that’s the key thing.”
As expected, the overall mood in the locker room area was on the somber side. No one was expecting to be having “exit day” on Monday. Many were hoping to be playing Game 6 in a few hours. Instead, players leaving today or tomorrow said their goodbyes, and the ice had already been removed from the VMC floor.
Each player met individually with the coaching staff before sharing a final exit interview with the media.
Keep an eye out for those interviews in the coming days and weeks.
For now, it has been an absolute pleasure covering the Portland Winterhawks this season.
DUBNetwork has you covered for the rest of the WHL Playoffs as well as any Winterhawks news over the offseason.
Until then, see you around the rink!
