It’s now a best of five headed to Portland.
The Prince George Cougars dropped game 2 of the Western Conference Final 5-3 to the Winterhawks, the series is tied at a game apiece.
The Winterhawks controlled the game from the start, stifling the Cougars at every turn.
“We knew they were going to come out tonight (Saturday), that’s what they’re going to do, they’re down 1-0, they didn’t want to go down 2-0, they’re a good hockey team, we just didn’t react to it,” said Cougars Head Coach and GM Mark Lamb.
“We knew that was going to happen, we just couldn’t sustain anything.”
“I thought our breakouts were cleaner, I thought our forecheck, we were on them a little bit harder than we were last night, those were two key areas we wanted to focus on going into the game,” said Winterhawks Head Coach and GM Mike Johnston.
“I really liked how our first period was, I thought we came out, we had the shot advantage, we had the chance advantage, and I think that was important, it gave us a lot of confidence in our game.”
Just past the midway point, Zac Funk found an opening behind the Winterhawks defence, and opened the scoring on a breakaway, and opened the floodgates.
Powerplay, breakaway. Zac Funk makes no mistake!#ALLCAPS @Capitals https://t.co/6YJBTBSied pic.twitter.com/pSYDkec2Zl
— xy – Prince George Cougars (@PGCougars) April 28, 2024
Less than 30 seconds after Funk sent the 6,016 CN Centre into a frenzy, Kyle Chyzowski put Portland on the board, and Jack O’Brien put them ahead 17 seconds after.
Get 'em up 19‼️#WHLPlayoffs | #FeedingTheFuture pic.twitter.com/Jl00ydB5Af
— Portland Winterhawks (@pdxwinterhawks) April 28, 2024
63 seconds after O’Brien’s goal, Borya Valis slid the puck past Jan Spunar to tie the game at two.
Big Bad Borya! https://t.co/cCJVExFidy pic.twitter.com/xND2feBqEc
— xy – Prince George Cougars (@PGCougars) April 28, 2024
Hoping for a spark from his team, Lamb shuffled his lines, reuniting Riley Heidt and Koehn Ziemmer, and pairing them with Funk.
“When things aren’t working, you switch things up, and it kind of worked for a while, but that’s the way the game was from the start, one line would be alright for one shift, and then the next line wouldn’t,” Lamb said.
“Usually when you switch things around, it looked like it was going to work, and then you get that momentum and it just rolls over, but it didn’t happen tonight.”
.@PGCougars Head Coach GM talks shuffling his lines and @pdxwinterhawks coming out strong following PG’s 5-3 loss in game 2 of the @TheWHL Western Conference Final pic.twitter.com/Es4hHs2FQD
— My Prince George Now (@mypgnow) April 28, 2024
The Winterhawks sealed their win with a trio of goals from James Stefan (on the power play), Diego Buttazoni and an empty-netter from Marcus Nguyen.
“I thought in the third period our team had a lot of confidence,” Johnston said.
“We knew that we were going to get our chances, we get that goal and then I thought we just locked it down from there, we really didn’t give them anything until the last 20 seconds or so.”
.@pdxwinterhawks Head Coach Mike Johnston talks about his teams strong start in their 5-3 game two win over the @PGCougars in the @TheWHL Western Conference Final pic.twitter.com/ogjWzSKiQH
— My Prince George Now (@mypgnow) April 28, 2024
Oren Shtrom scored for the Cougars in the dying seconds of the game.
The series now shifts to Portland for games three, four and five.
Game three will be played Monday night.
Over in game two of the Eastern Conference Final, the Saskatoon Blades flipped the script on the Moose Jaw Warriors, picking up the 3-2 overtime win.
Moose Jaw won game one 4-3 in overtime.
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