T-Birds drop 8-4 decision in Game 5, Brandon wins WHL Championship

KENT – The Seattle Thunderbirds quest for their first ever WHL Championship came to an end Friday night at the ShoWare Center.

In a crazy game that had many momentum swings, the Brandon Wheat Kings outlasted Seattle 8-4 to win the third Ed Chynoweth Cup in franchise history. The series ends in five quick games but the contest was much closer than the tally indicates as the T-Birds lost three times in overtime to start.

While Brandon will now move on to Red Deer to compete in the Memorial Cup, the T-Birds are left wondering about what could have been.

“It’s not a good feeling, that’s for sure,” head coach Steve Konowalchuk said. “You come into this series and you expect to win and believe you can win and we came up short. Definitely disappointing. Guys played hard and what a run. It’s a season that all those guys should be proud of and remember what they accomplished.”

For goalie Landon Bow, defenseman Jared Hauf and team captain Jerret Smith, it was the end of their junior careers. The three over-agers played their last WHL game, and for Smith and Hauf, it closed long T-Birds careers.

Smith scored a huge goal on Friday, his first of the playoffs, in the second period to pull the T-Birds even after they had fallen behind 3-1.

“There’s a lot of an emotions running through everyone right now,” Smith said. “It’s pretty tough to lose like that in the finals … It’s my last game ever so it’s definitely tough. I’m sure the other guys will come back next year with a fire in their stomach and never forget this feeling.”

For Konowalchuk, he’s coached Hauf and Smith the majority of his tenure in Seattle. Hauf was the only player Friday who was on the roster in his first season with the club. The junior hockey cycle always leads to sad goodbyes at the end of each season and Friday was no different.

“I have so much respect for both those guys,” Konowalchuk said. “They’re the hardest players on our ice, they didn’t give up for a second. That’s why they’re both leaders on this team and I’m proud to be able to coach them for that many years. Very good young men.”

Seattle knew it had an uphill battle coming into Friday’s game. Trailing in the series three games to one meant that the T-Birds’ backs were definitely against the wall.

They fell behind early after John Quenneville scored and then had to kill off two full minutes of a five-on-three Brandon power play. They got through that with several outstanding saves by Bow and that seemed to spark them as Josh Uhrich would score a couple minutes later to pull Seattle even.

The Wheat Kings would strike for a power-play goal late in the first off the stick of Macoy Erkamps to end the period with the lead. They extended that lead in what turned out to be a wild second period.

Tyler Coulter scored to put Brandon up 3-1 but then Uhrich scored again which was followed up by Smith’s goal on the power play. That got the 5,088 in attendance fired up and the T-Birds turned that momentum into a lead when Alexander True scored his fourth goal in three games.

The T-Birds were up 4-3 and maybe starting to believe they were on their way.

However, as they’ve done all series, the Wheat Kings would come back. Just before the second ended, Jayce Hawryluk scored the first of his three goals on the night on a broken play and Nolan Patrick would put the dagger in the T-Birds early in the third.

Patrick had the puck behind the net and made a power move to the front of the net. With a Seattle defender hanging on him, he used his strength to sweep the puck past Bow with one hand. That made it 5-4 and took the air out of the T-Birds.

“There were some mistakes,” Konowalchuk said of the wide-open play on Friday. “I think guys were mentally drained. There wasn’t the kind of defensive shutdown that we’re used to playing but it’s been a long run and a lot of emotions.”

Up one, Hawryluk gave the Wheat Kings some breathing room with his second goal, coming on a one-timer during a Brandon power play. With the score 6-4 the T-Birds were not able to get much push back the other way.

Brandon would add two empty net goals as Seattle pulled Bow with just under four minutes to go in the game.

As the Wheat Kings celebrated on the ice, an exhausted T-Birds teams waited at center ice for the traditional hand shake. While obviously upset and disappointed, it’s important to remember that the team did turn in one of the most remarkable seasons in franchise history.

While that’s a positive, it was hard to think about that on Friday night.

“Right now we’ve got a tired bunch of players and a coaching staff that’s just as tired,” Konowalchuk said. “It’s frustrating to lose. Right now we’re just going to chill out for a day or two, have a couple of meetings, but I think it will fire up the guys. They will be hungry and it should be a good camp.”

Notes

• Hauf ends his five-year Seattle career after playing in 383 regular season and postseason games. The big defenseman from Calgary scored 11 goals and 58 points in his career, and this last season was his best. Playing on the top defensive pairing, against the top opponents, he finished up with a plus-10 rating.

• Smith played in 281 regular season games over four years with the T-Birds and finished with a two-point night on Friday. He was named team captain prior to this year and each of the last two seasons his offensive numbers improved. He ends his career with 24 goals and 118 points with the T-Birds.

• Bow came to Seattle at the trade deadline and was as big a reason for their second half run as anyone. With Seattle, he was 16-6 down the stretch and in the postseason he posted a 1.96 goals-against with an impressive save percentage of .927. His WHL career was mostly spent in Swift Current and he ends with 160 regular season games with a 74-56-8-5 career record.

Follow Andy Eide on Twitter @andyeide.

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