Saturday night the Portland Winterhawks (37-17-3-3) found themselves down by three goals less than ten minutes into their tenth game of the season with the Seattle Thunderbirds (24-28-5-2).
19-year-old Shane Farkas entered the game and settled Portland down and helped the team escape a slow start in the first period.
“We didn’t start very good, it wasn’t the start we wanted” Winterhawks assistant coach Don Hay said. “We were a little flat, we had a long travel night [on Friday]. Give Seattle credit, they came out with lots of energy and excitement.
The excitement started for Seattle when Matthew Wedman scored his 33rd goal of the season just 2:05 into the game.
Seattle Thunderbirds Head Coach Matt O’Dette said, “We focused on our start, we talked about it before the game; get the crowd going, get that momentum going in our favor. I thought we did that obviously building the 3-0 lead.”
Owen Williams and Andrej Kukuca each scored before the game reached the first media timeout.
Despite the shots being even an eight after 20 minutes of play, the first period was all Seattle. Portland gave Seattle eight minutes of power play time which hurt the pace Portland wanted to play.
Don Hay said, “You take four penalties early and it puts you back on your heels.”
For the Winterhawks, everything changed right off the first faceoff in the second period.
17-year-old defenseman Clay Hanus scored his sixth goal of the season to get the Winterhawks on the board less than two minutes into the middle frame. Three of the Minnetonka, Minnesota native’s six goals have come at the ShoWare Center.
27 seconds after Hanus scored, Lane Gilliss found the back of the net cutting the Seattle lead to one and Portland’s bench was fired up.
Hay explained just how big the two early goals were for his team, “Two fairly quick together got the bench alive and gave us hope and belief we could do it. We just stayed with it and Mike changed up the lines a little bit, and it seemed to work for us.”
Portland maintained the momentum throughout the majority of the second period. Nick Cicek made a hit against the wall on Thunderbrids defenseman Jake Lee. On the play, the referees handed out a five-minute major penalty and a game misconduct to Cicek.
After the hit, 2002-born Tyrel Bauer came to Lee’s defense and dropped the gloves with Cicek. Despite picking up the fighting major and two minutes for unsportsmanlike conduct, Bauer got both the Seattle bench as well as the crowd back in the game.
O’Dette said, “We want our guys to stick up for each other and that was a good example there. I thought game wise we needed a little bit of a spark there and that helped us get some.”
The good news for the Thunderbirds was Lee was able to return to the game after receiving some attention from the trainer. O’Dette commented, “He was a little bit shaken up; he is a pretty tough kid so he shook it off and got back in there.”
The power play time carried over into the final 20 minutes. However, once Portland killed the penalty they immediately went on the offensive.
Jared Freadrich tied the game at three with a shot from the point. The overage defenseman also scored in Tri-City on Friday evening giving Jared goals in back-to-back games. This was the second time this season where Freadrich scored goals in consecutive games.
Despite each team getting opportunities to win the game in regulation, both Roddy Ross and Shane Farkas kept the Winterhawks and Thunderbirds shooters off the score sheet.
In overtime each team had multiple grade-A chances to win the game. Kukuca showed tremendous speed, but was unable to beat Farkas.
Hay spoke about the overtime session from the Winterhawks perspective, “We had two breakaways in overtime and didn’t even get a shot on goal; and they were two guys we wanted to have the puck in Glass and Seth.”
Overtime did not produce a winner so the game went to a shootout. Portland’s Shane Farkas stopped Noah Philp, Wedman, and Kukuca. Seth Jarvis goal in the second round then meant the Winterhawks did not need to send a third shooter.
In 55:18 minutes of relief, Shane Farkas stopped all 22 shots he faced as well as all three in the shootout.
“Shane was great, he was our player of the game. To come in to that type of situation and close the door. He got the shootout win as he stood tall. We were really happy with that effort for sure” Don Hay said.
After the game Farkas talked about coming into the game after starting the game as the backup, “It really just comes down to knowing your role and doing your job just like any of the rest of us. Whether you are a rookie, or a drafted player, everyone has a job and everyone has to do it to make the dream work.”
In the shootout, Shane was prepared, “Shootouts, well, they are not easy. They may be easy for some guys, but it is almost like a game of chess sometimes. Knowing guys or not knowing guys, it really just comes down to how you play them.”
A strange moment occurred after Farkas stopped Kukuca. Both teams just waited on the bench while Shane was celebrating on his own.
The 19-year-old netminder smiled and laughed saying, “It was good you know, that little span there when we didn’t know it was over. It was kind of good because I got to savor that a bit before everyone.”
Seth Jarvis scored the only goal in the shootout for Portland and said, “I tried the same move in overtime and it didn’t work. I had a plan going in and saw Cody’s move and saw that Ross kind of fell to the ice, so thought ‘might as well try it,’ fortunately it worked out.
Even though Jarvis missed on his breakaway in overtime the Winterhawks sent him out second. Don Hay continues to be impressed by Jarvis lately, “Seth is a really good young player and is going to be a really good player in this league for us in the future. He is just continuing to develop and improve. He has a lot of confidence and lots of poise for a young guy.”
The two points for the Winterhawks kept them eight points behind the U.S. Division leading Everett Silvertips.
Meanwhile, every point matters for Seattle as they are holding onto the last wild card position. With Kamloops not gaining any points on Saturday, the Thunderbirds were able to extend their lead to five points. The Blazers still have two games in hand.
After Seattle played the top two teams in the U.S. Division this weekend, head coach Matt O’Dette was overall pleased, “Any point that we can muster, especially against good teams, we need to. We were disappointed we didn’t get the extra point. All-in-all a good weekend against two good teams. To get three points is really good.”
Portland is now off until Friday when they will begin a three-in-three. The weekend starts with the Winterhawks hosting the Spokane Chiefs in their final matchup of the year.
Notes:
– With Lane Gilliss’ goal in the second period he now has points in two of the last three games.
– Saturday was only the third game in 10 against Seattle where Joachim Blichfeld did not at least have one point.
– Michal Kvasnica was the last scratch and Haydn Delorme was the 12th forward.
– Brendan De Jong missed his sixth straight game.
– Matthew Quigley missed his fifth game in a row.
