Winterhawks pepper 46 shots in Kelowna, fall 3-1
Portland outshot Kelowna 46 to 15 on the road, but the Hawks couldn’t secure its first win of the road trip.
Game #53: Portland (1) at Kelowna (3)
SOG: POR (46) – KEL (15)
PP: POR (1/7) – KEL (0/4)
Saves: Špunar (12/15) – Boyko (45/46)
COMPLETE BOX SCORE
SCORING:
- POR – 13:25 – First Period – Gabe Klassen (30) from Luca Cagnoni and James Stefan [PP]
- KEL – 17:29 – Second Period – Marcus Pacheco (9) [SH]
- KEL – 1:58 – Third Period – Turner McMillen (7) from Trae Johnson and Andrew Cristall
- KEL – 6:26 – Third Period – Adam Kydd (16) from John Babcock and Gabriel Szturc
The Story:
The Winterhawks (36-13-2-2) scored the first goal of the game and outshot the Rockets (19-30-3-0) by 31, but took a 3-1 loss in their final regular season meeting against Kelowna.
Both teams had scoring opportunities in the opening period and Jan Špunar made a spectacular stop minutes into the game, one of his seven first-period saves, to give the Hawks a boost at Prospera Place. Not long later, Portland earned a power play and its perimeter passing set up Gabe Klassen on the right face-off circle. The captain’s hard shot deflected off a defenseman’s skate at the top of the crease to give Portland a 1-0 lead.
Kelowna eventually evened the score in the second period. After holding the Rockets to zero shots through 17 minutes of the middle period, Marcus Pacheco scored the Rockets’ seventh shorthanded goal of the year to tie the game at 1-1. Portland outshot Kelowna 16-to-1 in the middle period alone.
The Rockets carried the scoring momentum into the third period with goals from Turner McMillen and Adam Kydd to stretch their lead to 3-1. Portland fired 15 shots on goal for its third consecutive period, but could not get any more pucks past Rockets goaltender and New York Rangers prospect Talyn Boyko.
Portland’s road trip continues north to Prince George with games queued up on Monday afternoon (2:00 p.m. PT) and Tuesday evening.
QUOTE OF THE NIGHT presented by BBF TECHNOLOGIES:
“I think we did a lot of good things tonight. Obviously, we didn’t come up on the right end of (the result), but if we keep sticking to it, and put a few pucks in the net once in a while, I think we’ll be good. We want to get back in the win column and we need it to start on Monday.”
Winterhawks forward Josh Zakreski