Thunderbirds come up short in 2-1 loss to the Portland Winterhawks

KENT – With their longest standing rivals in the building, the Thunderbirds let a couple of bad plays sink them Friday night.

Seattle played a solid game for the most part, but two turnovers ended up costing them a tight 2-1 loss at the hands of the Portland Winterhawks.

Portland’s Sklyer McKenzie stripped the puck away from a Seattle forward in the neutral zone with under five minutes to play in a tied game. That created a two-on-one and the speedy winger decided to shoot it and was able to beat goalie Rylan Toth for his 25^th maker of the season.

“Could we have won? Yeah,” Seattle coach Steve Konowalchuk said after. “They made some mistakes, we made some mistakes but they capitalized on them more than we did. We’ll get back on the horse tomorrow.”

Winterhawks goalie Cole Kehler was kept busy by a T-Birds offense that was able to generate 41 shots after two games where it struggled. Kehler made many key saves, several of which were on good Seattle scoring chances and ended the night with 40 saves to pick up his 16^th win of the year.

While Kelher was good, the T-Birds also had some bad luck.

In the first period, Scott Eansor beat Kehler but his shot hit the cross bar and deflected out of harm’s way. Later, on a Seattle power play, Donovan Neuls missed a wide open net after some good puck movement.

It was that kind of night for Seattle.

“We could have won that game,” Konowalchuk said. “We’d still like to be a little bit better so it doesn’t get down to a decision like that but that’s hockey and we’ve just got to make sure we’re really ready to go tomorrow.”

Toth would end the night stopping 34 Portland shots and gave his club a chance to win as he continued his strong play of late.

Portland got on the board first Friday after a Seattle turnover in the neutral zone. As it would on the game-winner, the turnover created a two-on-one rush that ended with Keegan Iverson snapping a wrist shot for his 14^th marker of the year.

The T-Birds would tie the game up in the second period on their power play.

Coming into the game the Seattle power play had been stuck in a 1-for-33 slump but would get on the board when Keegan Kolesar found defenseman Aaron Hyman pinching in from the point. Hyman made a nice play to control the bouncing puck and quickly snapped a shot over Kehler’s shoulder.

It was Hyman’s first goal since joining the T-Birds just after the break and his second on the season.

Seattle took a late penalty in the second and would have to kill off a power play to start the third. The Portland power play is one of the top units in the league and had scored nine goals already in the previous four games between the two teams.

The T-Birds held on to kill it off as well as another early third period penalty but that gave the Winterhawks some momentum and it took a while for the T-Birds to get back to their game plan.

“They’ve got a good power play and we did a good job killing but our mindset wasn’t right,” Konowalchuk said. “We’re looking to poke pucks and go for a chance instead of killing the penalty. When we weren’t going good at times we were just going for the easy chance and we’ve got to have the mindset that we’re going to outwork the other team.”

Seattle got their game going eventually in the final frame but Kehler made all the saves. After the McKenzie score to put the Winterhawks up for good, the T-Birds continued to create offense, but just couldn’t find the net.

“Their goalie made some good saves, you have to give him credit,” Konowalchuk said. “We had some traffic on some that didn’t find their way into the net. It’s frustrating but we’ve just got to regroup.”

The T-Birds won’t have to wait very long to try and regroup. The two teams will head down I-5 for a New Year’s Eve rematch Saturday night. Face off is at 7:30 PM.

Notes

• Seattle pulled off another trade earlier in the day and acquired defenseman Austin Strand from the Red Deer Rebels. Strand was a scratch Friday as he had not arrived in Seattle with enough time to play. Konowalchuk said they were hopeful that he could play on Saturday.

• Nolan Volcan picked up an assist on the Hyman power-play goal. It was his 32^nd point on the year which sets a new career high in scoring for the speedy winger.

• At the World Junior Championships being held in Toronto, Denmark suffered a tough shoot out loss to Switzerland. Seattle’s Alexander True was named Denmark’s player of the match with a goal and assist.

• Team Canada and Mathew Barzal play a big game Saturday afternoon against Team USA. Both squads have yet to lose at the tournament and enter with 3-0 records.

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