T-Birds take out Portland 6-3 to set up playoff clash

Like they did opening night, the Thunderbirds turned away the Portland Winterhawks Saturday night, this time by a 6-3 final score in front of a sold out ShoWare Center

BY ANDY EIDE

Mar 22, 2015, 8:15 AM Updated: 11:50 am

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Ryan Gropp beats Adin Hill for his second goal during Seattle's 6-3 win against Portland. (T-Birds photo)

(T-Birds photo)

KENT – Seattle finished their regular season Saturday night against the same opponent they started with 72 games ago.

Like they did opening night the Thunderbirds turned away the Portland Winterhawks Saturday night, this time by a 6-3 final score in front of a sold out ShoWare Center. Ryan Gropp continued his hot play by potting two goals and rookie Logan Flodell stopped 35 shots to pick up his third win of the season.

Portland was paced by an Oliver Bjorkstrand hat trick but did not get contributions from the rest of its lineup.

The loss for Portland was costly as it will not be able to catch Everett for the top spot in the division. That means that Seattle and Portland will play in the playoffs for the first time since 2006.

“The guys played hard,” head coach Steve Konowalchuk said. “For the most part rolled four lines, everybody pitched in. Give credit to our young guys, they played better today than they did at the start of the season, as we hoped.”

It was another big night for Gropp, who has six goals in his last two games. Afterwards he couldn’t remember the last time he scored six in two nights.

“Yeah, never,” Gropp said. “Maybe back in bantam days, I don’t know, but it’s pretty cool and I’m pretty happy.”

Gropp played with Mathew Barzal and Roberts Lipsbergs again as Konowalchuk continues to get good play from his newly formed top line. The line was put together four games ago in the first period against Tri City. Since then the trio has combined for eight goals and 13 assists.

Barzal and Gropp continued to have good chemistry together and Barzal has helped set up Gropp on five of the six goals he scored this weekend. The distributor and the finisher are working well.

“We both have pretty good chemistry,” Gropp said. “We get along together off the ice so it’s been working the last couple of games and hopefully we can keep it going.”

After a stretch where he didn’t score, Gropp now is playing as well as he has all season and finishes the season with 30 goals. He added an assist to his two markers and edged out Barzal for the season scoring race – by one point.

“Obviously (my confidence) is pretty high,” Gropp said. “Whenever you have nights like that you get the confidence. Those are two big, last two wins to end the regular season. We’re looking forward to carrying it into the playoffs.”

The line is paying off overall as the T-Birds have exploded to score a lot of goals this past week. The six scored on Saturday gave them 23 in four games.

“It starts with puck management so you’re playing in the other team’s end,” Konowalchuk said of the offense. “I think before the last five or six games I wanted to be able to get different lines scoring a little bit. That seems to be going now, everyone’s chipping in so that’s helped.”

The other story Saturday night was rookie goalie Logan Flodell, who got the start to relieve Taran Kozun. Flodell has had limited playing time this year but has started twice in the last three games. He’s faced two tough opponents, first Kelowna on Wednesday and then Portland Saturday night, two of the best offensive clubs in the league.

He opened the game on a down note though as Bjorkstrand took a shot that fooled him 38 seconds into the game to give Portland an early lead. After that, the rookie settled down and made some big saves.

“It was awesome,” he said of the win. “(My teammates) were great in front of me. I had a rough one at the start but I thought I held my ground and took the shots when I could.”

Giving up a goal on the game’s first shot is now how Flodell wanted to begin his start, and he leaned on the veteran Kozun to help shake it off.

“I kind of just looked at (Kozun) and he just said ‘Don’t worry about, it happens,'” Flodell said. “It’s happened to him and I learn a lot of stuff from him so it’s good.”

Beating Portland and Kelowna in the same week will pay dividends for the rookie netminder moving forward. Kozun will get the workman’s load come the playoffs but Flodell’s play this week has to give him, and his coach, confidence if he is needed for any reason.

“Every game he hangs in there and makes timely saves for us,” Konowalchuk said. “He’s got us a lot of points down the stretch and anytime you can get points from your back up goalie in there it’s a job well done and against two of the better teams.”

With the early deficit, the T-Birds kept playing in the first period and turned the tide of the play pretty quickly. They were able to create chances and held the puck for long stretches. Gropp got the game even after he deked around a defender to create space and beat Adin Hill with a nice top-shelf shot.

Seattle would take the lead for good a few minutes later when Cory Millette tipped a Jared Hauf shot past Hill for the T-Birds’ second goal of the night.

The lead would grow in the second as Gropp fought his way through the Portland defense to sweep the puck past Hill to make it 3-1. Two minutes later Hauf would fire a shot from the point that Hill couldn’t handle and just like that the T-Birds had what felt like a commanding 4-1 lead.

Bjorkstrand was able to keep Portland in it, however. Later in the second he picked Scott Eansor’s pocket in the Seattle zone, turned and fired a shot that Flodell couldn’t catch up to. That cut the lead to 4-2 heading into the third period.

In the third the game got tighter when Bjorkstrand, who is the most dangerous penalty killer in the league, broke away while killing a Seattle power play. Ethan Bear tried to stop him but ended up tripping the Columbus Blue Jackets prospect. The referee awarded Bjorkstrand a penalty shot, which he converted on for his 61st goal of the season.

The goal gave Portland some life but Seattle struck 21 seconds later. Still on the power play, Jerett Smith had some room, skated in and fired a shot that Hill got a piece of but couldn’t keep from finding the net. That gave Seattle its two-goal lead back and broke the Winterhawks’ backs.

“As soon as they scored, guys were on the bench saying ‘Hey, we’ve still got a power play,'” Konowalchuk said. “They went right out and scored a power-play goal and that’s probably the determining factor in the game right there.”

The T-Birds would add an empty netter from Shea Theodore for the exclamation point in the win.

With the regular season wrapped up the T-Birds now know who their first round opponents are going to be. They have played Portland 12 times, winning seven, and will have at least four more games to go. The series starts next Saturday in the Rose City.

Konowalchuk says the win Saturday was nice but they weren’t looking to send any kind of message.

“We have a ton of respect for that team,” he said. “They’re a good hockey team and you can see how they can score goals. Going into the game we just wanted to make sure everybody was playing and playing at their best. Let the results take care of themselves.”

The T-Birds won the season series with Portland for the first time since the 2008-09 season when they had eight wins against the Hawks. None of that matters now as they need four more wins against Portland if they wish to move on to the second round.

“It’s a fun rivalry with Portland,” Konowalchuk said. “Last year we had the Everett rivalry, this year we’ll have the Portland rivalry. They’re a good hockey team. We’re going to have to go to work this week and make sure we’re ready to go.”

Notes

• Konowalchuk didn’t stick to his matchups on Saturday. Instead of throwing Scott Eansor’s line out against Bjorkstrand he rotated his four lines regardless of who the Winterhawks had on the ice. This is key as Seattle won’t have the last change in Games 1 and 2. Getting the other players experience trying to slow down Bjorkstrand could pay some dividends.

• Barzal ends the year averaging over one assist per game.

• The last time Portland and Seattle hooked up in the playoffs they played a classic seven-game series. Is that in store again this time?

• Stay tuned to our blog here all week as we will have extensive coverage and previews of the upcoming series.

Follow Andy Eide on Twitter @andyeide.